Aug 21 - News & Record, Greensboro, N.C.


Motorists honked in support as more than 50 clean-energy proponents waved signs at the corner of Patterson Court and High Point Road on Thursday, hoping to temper opposition to proposed federal carbon-emissions legislation.

But inside the Greensboro Coliseum, about 300 North Carolinians attending an Energy Citizens rally chanted "Just say no!" to a cap-and-trade bill they expect will raise energy prices and spur massive job losses.

"We prefer the carrot rather than the stick," said Larry Wooten, president of the N.C. Farm Bureau. "We would prefer Congress look at incentive-based legislation to help move this forward."

The rally was one of 19 to be held across the country during the congressional recess by Energy Citizens, a new group backed by the American Petroleum Institute and other organizations that oppose the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009.

The legislation, which narrowly passed the U.S. House in June, would set a limit on greenhouse gas emissions and require many companies to buy emission permits.

The legislation would also require utilities to supply 20 percent of their demand from efficiency savings and renewable energy by 2039.

The bill would use revenues from the permits to offset higher energy prices paid by low-income households. U.S. senators plan to debate their version of the bill at the end of September.

Neither Sen. Kay Hagan nor Sen. Richard Burr attended the rally, but U.S. Rep. Howard Coble, a Greensboro Republican who voted against the bill, told attendees he would send their message to Washington.

"I think it will open the floodgate to additional taxes," Coble said about the bill. "We need to address climate change but I don't think we need to be the only country addressing it."

Randy Dellinger, owner of a biodiesel refinery in Caldwell County, said the United States should not rely on other countries' actions.

"We should be leaders in the world and not followers," said Dellinger, who attended a counter-rally sponsored by environmental groups.

"At some point in time you just have to bite the bullet and say renewable energy is important for this generation."

State Rep. Pricey Harrison, a Greensboro Democrat, said the bill is vital for motivating other countries to address global warming and move people away from using carbon-heavy fossil fuels.

"We have a finite amount of oil in this country," she said. "That's not sustainable. We have got to wean ourselves off fossil fuels."

Harrison and others at the counter-rally dismissed the Energy Citizens event as an "astroturf," or fake grassroots effort, funded by "big oil." "What they're doing is funding oil employees or whoever they can get to look like there's this groundswell opposition to clean-energy legislation," she said. "I just have not heard that kind of opposition to it from people at the legislature."

But Mark Mirabile, a Greensboro electrical engineer who doesn't believe in the human-caused global warming theory, said many people have real doubts about the bill's merit.

"People intuitively feel something is not right and that's why they're out here," he said.

Contact Morgan Josey Glover at 373-7078 or morgan.josey@news-record.com

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