As Climate Change Hits the Southeast, Communities Wrestle with Politics, Funding

Like hundreds of other cities, Louisville, Kentucky, is searching for a path to address climate change.

Hurricane Florence flooded out a contaminated
 Superfund site in Cheraw, South Carolina. 

Mayor Greg Fischer has declared a climate emergency, proposed a climate action plan and set a goal of reducing citywide carbon emissions 80 percent by 2050. 

To get there, however, Fischer needs the cooperation of the region's electric utility, Louisville Gas and Electric Co., which depends on coal and, with its related companies, has committed only to cutting carbon emissions 70 percent from 2010 levels by 2050.

Even that more modest commitment, though, is now in doubt, based on recent comments by LG&E's chief operating officer, Lonnie Bellar, at an energy conference last fall, dominated by coal interests. In discussing his company's own carbon reduction plan, Bellar declined to make any promises about a clean energy future.

Read the story from Inside Climate News by James Bruggers  - “As Climate Change Hits the Southeast, Communities Wrestle with Politics, Funding.”