Jim Hightower's Radio Lowdown

Dirty Coal v. Clean Energy: Guess Who’s Winning?


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WARNING: News headlines can give you a headache.

For example, take typical headlines on today’s environmental stories:

* Earth’s climate getting catastrophically hotter, faster

* Greenhouse pollution increasing again

* President calls global warming a “hoax

* Fracking executive now runs Energy Department

* US funding new coal plants

* White House abruptly cancels wind-power projects.

Whew! My head hurts. The negativity in such headlines tells people that grassroots activism demanding clean energy and environmental sanity is futile, for government has been shanghaied by a political cabal of corporate executives.

But wait – while it doesn’t get front page treatment, a bracing wind of change is blowing in from the countryside! It turns out that producers, funders, and consumers of alternative energy have not rejected a brighter, sustainable future just because profiteers and politicians command us to follow them off the cliff.

Indeed, here’s a surprising development that the calcified defenders of dirty monopolized fuels could not have imagined only 10 years ago: Even in the fossilized Kingdom of Texas, solar power now provides more electricity to our people than does King Coal! Despite relentless efforts by our corrupt governor and top Republican officials to rig the marketplace against renewable energy, solar arrays and wind turbines are soon to pass Big Oil’s fracked gas as the top supplier of electricity to Texas homes and businesses.

Here’s an uplifting headline for you: Last year, wind, sun, and other renewable sources surged past coal as America’s number one source of electric power. As a leading climate scientist concludes: “We are at the end of the fossil fuel economy.” So, keep pushing.

Do something!

Want to keep pushing for environmental wins in Texas? Check out the Texas Campaign for the Environment, who have scored some great wins and continue to push for more.

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Jim Hightower's Radio LowdownBy Jim Hightower

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