NC WARN says Josh Stein should side with climate scientists and North Carolinians hit by weather disasters and constant power bill hikes

DURHAM, N.C. – North Carolina Governor Josh Stein should stop dancing atop the fence separating Duke Energy leaders from climate scientists decrying the corporation’s massive expansion of fossil fuels and ongoing suppression of solar and wind power.

That’s the focus of a 30-second video ad running on news outlets, and similar online and print versions by NC WARN. The watchdog’s ads call on state residents, elected officials and others to press Stein to act on behalf of people already suffering from past weather disasters and ongoing hikes to their power bills.

As stated by Dr. Drew Shindell, a globally prominent climatologist at Duke University, “It’s really an emergency to change course as quickly as possible. Which is what you do in an emergency – you do whatever it takes. … We really need to use all the levers we can to push Duke Energy away from this fossil fuel path.”

NC WARN says Stein must heed that warning. The key thing Gov. Stein must do is cut through Duke Energy’s greenwashing lie that North Carolina is reducing greenhouse pollution.

He must finally begin telling North Carolinians the truth – that Duke Energy is already a top global polluter and it leads the nation in expanding fracked gas-fired power plants as well as dangerous, failure-prone nuclear reactors.

NC WARN is screening a hard-hitting documentary –The True Cost of Power: Duke Energy’s Climate Deception – at community meetings and film festivals. The 18-minute film is a tool to build public support for a genuine shift to low-cost, local solar power matched with battery storage – the fastest, cheapest and fairest way to phase-out fossil fuels.

Duke Energy’s influence over both political parties for many decades has caused regulators,  governors and legislators to repeatedly fail to rein in the massive corporate polluter. As people learn the truth about Duke’s rate-hiking, climate-wrecking expansion and its stifling of inexpensive solar, thousands have already urged Stein to rise above his predecessors. 

NC WARN keeps adding to the pressure from 61 scientists, led by Shindell, along with more than 300 businesses and organizations and thousands of individuals who have called for the governor’s leadership amid failure on the climate front at the national level.

“It’s really an emergency to change course as quickly as possible. Which is what you do in an emergency – you do whatever it takes. … We really need to use all the levers we can to push Duke Energy away from this fossil fuel path.”

Duke University climatologist Dr. Drew Shindell

The Town of Carrboro is the latest to urge Stein to finally break through Duke Energy’s deception and stop its huge expansion of dirty and dangerous power. The Town Council joined a formal NC WARN resolution to that effect at Tuesday night’s meeting.

Now in its 38th year, NC WARN is building people power in the climate and energy justice movement to persuade or require Charlotte-based Duke Energy – one of the world’s largest climate polluters – to make a quick transition to renewable, affordable power generation and energy efficiency in order to avert climate tipping points and ongoing rate hikes. 

NC WARN News Release; Hurricane Helene damage photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash; Duke Energy logo from Wikipedia Commons