More than 60 U.S. research scientists today urged North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein to use his executive authority to stop Duke Energy Corp.’s fossil-fuel buildout and suppression of renewable energy solutions. These actions are critical to avoiding the worst damages of the climate emergency and to save lives, the scientists said. [Read full letter here]
Four prominent public-health and climate scientists — professors Drew Shindell, Michael Mann and Paul Baker and former EPA specialist Dale Evarts — and the Center for Biological Diversity and NC WARN organized the letter to Stein. It’s signed by 61 leading scientists.
The letter calls on the governor to stop Duke Energy — the third-largest corporate climate polluter in the country — from delaying the climate-saving transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. A recent lawsuit brought by the town of Carrboro, N.C., against Duke Energy says its top executives have misled the public for decades about climate science and the health harms from the corporation’s increased reliance on coal and gas.
“Duke Energy executives are brushing aside scientists’ warnings and Gov. Stein needs to step in for the sake of people and our planet,” said Drew Shindell, Ph.D., a climate scientist at Duke University and lead author on two U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports. “The science is clear that as long as we keep burning fossil fuels, climate disasters like Helene and extreme heat waves will keep getting worse. These disasters will cost lives, drive species extinct and obliterate many of the places we call home. This is urgent and Gov. Stein has a responsibility to use all the tools at his disposal to force mega-polluters like Duke Energy to do what’s best for North Carolinians.”
Duke Energy has one of the largest planned gas buildouts of any utility this decade and recently announced it would consider delaying the retirement of its coal fleet in response to the Trump administration’s climate protection rollbacks.
Duke Energy generates only 1.4% of its power from solar. The corporation has long obstructed local renewable energy solutions, like rooftop and community solar, despite their vast potential to replace fossil fuels and the many other benefits they provide.
“I hope Gov. Stein will listen to these scientists and use his executive authority to wean Duke Energy from its growing dependence on dangerous fossil fuels,” said Gaby Sarri-Tobar, senior energy justice campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. “Duke Energy’s reckless expansion of fossil gas is costing lives and saddling North Carolinians with skyrocketing utility bills and deadlier extreme weather. Trump and his billionaire buddies are throwing communities and our climate under the bus, so we desperately need Gov. Stein to step up and challenge the polluters putting our planet in peril.”
The scientists urged the governor to speak out against Duke Energy’s increasing reliance on fossil fuels and demand a rapid transition to clean energy solutions like rooftop and community-based solar with battery storage.
In a peer-reviewed journal article earlier this week, a separate group of top scientists issued an urgent warning that fossil fuels and the fossil-fuel industry are driving interlinked crises, from climate disasters to biodiversity loss to deadly diseases.
“Gov. Josh Stein must break the long-running pretense that Duke Energy and its home state are helping slow the climate crisis,” said NC WARN Director Jim Warren. “We applaud the courage of scientists calling for genuine changes. The governor can inspire the entire nation by standing up to one of the world’s worst climate polluters, and the world desperately needs such heroic action.”
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The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 1.7 million members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places.
NC WARN is a 37-year-old 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization tackling the accelerating crisis posed by climate change by building people power for a swift North Carolina transition to clean power, and by promoting energy and climate justice.
