It seems crazy that people would be forced to pay to make themselves and their planet even sicker. But thanks to a corrupt utility law that the Ohio General Assembly refuses to repeal, that’s exactly what’s happening in the Buckeye State.
The idea that increasing greenhouse gases could heated the planet has already been at least until the 1930s.. And as cars and power plants spew more and more carbon dioxide and other gases into the atmosphere, scientists are warning in increasingly dire terms that we are at critical point beyond which we would be condemned to suffer at least some of its negative consequences.
Some were determined to ignore this almost unanimously scientific consensus that human-caused global warming is happening. But this year, the alarms were sounding.
From June to August the highest temperatures in the world in historyand from January to August was the second hottest. And, as predicted, extreme weather conditions accompanied the heat, including longest tropical storm in Africa, heat waves in Europe, Asia and the United States, deadly fire on Maui and the flood in Libya, which Entire cities were wiped out and over 11,000 people were killed.
We Midwesterners have been choking on ourselves many times this summer unprecedented smoke from the fire from massive fires far north in Canada. The consequences of a warming planet have literally come to us.
As the urgency grows, climate scientists say we will have to live with the bad effects of climate change no matter what. But they say what we do now will have a huge impact on how bad those effects will be.
“Widespread and rapid changes have occurred in the atmosphere, ocean, cryosphere and biosphere,” the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change wrote in its 2023 report. AR6 Synthesis Report“Human-induced climate change is already driving many extreme weather and climate events in every region around the world. This has led to widespread adverse impacts and associated losses and damage to nature and people. Vulnerable communities that have historically contributed least to current climate change are disproportionately affected.”
But for some reason Ohio taxpayers are forced to spend hundreds of millions to keep two 68-year-old coal-fired power plants that supposedly could not survive without subsidies. It is also surprising that one of the carbon dioxide-emitting power plants that Ohio taxpayers subsidize is located far down the Ohio River, in Madison, Indiana.
And what’s even stranger is that the subsidies are still in place, even though they are a product of what could have been. the biggest corruption scandal in Ohio’s history.
Former House Speaker Larry Householder, a Glenville Republican, is serving sentence of 20 years to federal prison for using more than $60 million in municipal funds to shepherd through the Legislature House Bill 6, a $1.3 billion taxpayer bailout package.
Akron-based FirstEnergy paid out the immense majority of the money, and the immense majority of the bailout was intended to sustain two nuclear plants in northern Ohio that had been spun off. But in the wake of the arrests of Householder and four others, the nuclear subsidy and another that went solely to FirstEnergy were revoked.
Despite its corrupt beginnings, the law providing subsidies remains in force — a fact federal prosecutors condemned while Householder and former Ohio Republican Party Chairman Matt Borges were convicted.
And while most of the subsidies have been repealed, enormous amounts of money continue to flow to aging coal-fired plants owned by a consortium of utilities. The largest of these is Columbus-based AEP, which has a 40% stake and also contributed $900,000 to the effort to pass the utility bailout.
The state’s official consumer watchdog, the Office of Consumer’s Counsel, estimates that taxpayers have been forced to pay $218 million so far to keep the two ancient plants smoking. The agency also estimates that the smoke so far has contained 42 million tons of carbon dioxide, 31,000 tons of nitrogen oxides and 24,000 tons of sulfur dioxide — all gases linked to the warming that is ravaging the planet.
AEP spokesman Scott Blake was asked about the company’s funding for the rescue. He was also asked why ratepayers should be forced to subsidize uncompetitive coal-fired power plants, especially given that we appear to be experiencing a climate change tipping point. He addressed only the first question.
“After AEP learned of the criminal charges against an Ohio legislator and others in connection with (the financial bailout), AEP, with the assistance of outside counsel, conducted a review of the circumstances surrounding the passage of the bill,” Blake said in an email. “The Board does not believe that AEP engaged in any misconduct in connection with the passage of HB 6.”
Basav Sen is the director of climate policy at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies. He said the fact that the corrupt bailout bill is forcing Ohioans to pay for worsening climate change is an extreme example of an ancient energetic: Power generators, fossil fuel producers, manufacturers and — at least until recently — automakers have all profited from the polluting status quo, so climate has become an afterthought.
“They obviously have no interest in winding down these activities,” Sen said in an interview last week. “This is a classic case of private interests colliding with the broader public interest — because it’s clear that it’s in our collective interest to eliminate greenhouse gas pollution and other types of pollution.”
He added that it is especially unhappy when utility companies insist on supporting the most polluting form of energy generation.
“As an electricity consumer, I’m a dependent customer,” Sen said. “There’s one utility company in my area. It’s a monopoly. I can’t live without electricity. I don’t really have control over it.”
