Louisville's next mayor must make clean energy a priority | Opinion
Louisville’s next mayor must make clean energy a priority | Opinion
Against a tide of indifference and hostility to a more livable planet, the city’s next mayor will have to speak up and act for the environment.
Paul Wesslund | Opinion contributor
EPA Deputy unveils coal rollback at Louisville’s Mill Creek power plant
EPA Deputy Administrator David Fotouhi announced the agency will roll back limits on mercury, particulate matter and other toxic emissions from coal‑fired power plants.
- Louisville environmental groups are hosting a mayoral forum on climate change ahead of the May primary election.
- Recent years have seen record-breaking heat and rainfall, contributing to costly weather disasters across the nation.
- The upcoming virtual forum on March 25 aims to hold mayoral candidates accountable for environmental action.
Four years ago, seven candidates for Louisville mayor, including the current mayor, took part in a forum focused on fighting climate change. Nearly 100 people participated in the Zoom call aimed at implementing the Louisville Metro Council’s 2020 resolution to power the city with 100% clean energy by 2040.
Nine Louisville and Kentucky environmental groups have come together to sponsor another mayoral environmental forum this year, on March 25, ahead of the primary election May 19. But a few very important things have changed in the past four years.
Since then, the world has felt the hottest three years since record keeping started in 1850. Last year began with Kentucky’s wettest spring on record. And that only tells part of the story. The Courier Journal reported that, in recent years, those huge amounts of rainfall are coming clustered in fewer events, leading to devastating and deadly flooding.
Nationwide, weather disasters have been steadily increasing since the 1980s. In 2023, 28 climate and weather events cost us $93 billion in damages and 492 deaths. Even homeowners insurance companies are feeling these climate change effects. Major insurers pulled out of Florida and California. Others in Florida and Louisiana became insolvent.
Opinion: Some in Louisville race for mayor have wrong plans for ICE
Climate disappointment
Something else has happened in the four years since the last mayor’s environmental forum. Despite all the evidence of a growing climate crisis, it’s getting less attention. Information overload from each scary new headline of the day distracts from the consequences of a warming planet.
Political sloganeering has made things even worse.
The Trump administration has led the way with a full-throated ridiculing of the global warming that causes climate change. And it’s backed up those attacks with action, cancelling billions of dollars in renewable energy projects. Those projects, incidentally, were providing jobs for local economies as well as cheaper and cleaner energy.
Our own Kentucky legislature minimizes climate threats. It even went against the wishes of state electric utilities by making it harder for them to close inefficient coal-fired power plants.
Another climate disappointment comes from Louisville Gas & Electric. As the monopoly that provides all of Louisville’s electricity, it could be a powerful partner for the Metro Council’s clean energy resolution. LG&E is involved in some renewable energy programs, but they fall far short of meeting the goals of the 2020 resolution.
(The details of that resolution call for three stages of implementation. First, by 2030, all of city government would be powered by clean electricity. Second, by 2035, in addition to just electricity, all forms of energy used by the city government would come from clean sources of fuel. Third, by 2040, in addition to the city government, all of Louisville would be powered by clean energy.)
Opinion: Louisville climate change solutions are being hidden, but I’m sharing the truth
Climate change is not rocket science
While climate change has been tagged as complicated and politically divisive, the basics are simple. I learned about it in 6th grade science as “the greenhouse effect.” When sunlight enters a greenhouse and reflects off the floor or other surface, it gets trapped by the glass roof, heating up the greenhouse. Carbon dioxide in the Earth’s atmosphere acts like that glass roof, trapping the sun’s heat. A huge producer of carbon dioxide is the burning of fossil fuels — coal, oil, gasoline, natural gas. It’s why their emissions are referred to as “greenhouse gases.” The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been steadily increasing over the past 100 years, and accelerating dramatically in the last several years.
All of which makes this year’s mayoral clean energy forum even more important than the one four years ago. Louisville’s mayor will have to speak up and act for the environment against a tide of indifference and hostility to a more livable planet.
The March 25th forum will be a virtual one, held by Zoom and hosted by the Renewable Energy Alliance of Louisville (REAL). All candidates for mayor have been invited. It’s free and open to the public, with registration required. You can register and get more info on the REAL website, renewableenergylouisville.org.
Agree or disagree? Submit your letter to the editor.
Paul Wesslund is a Louisville author who writes on energy issues and was editor of Kentucky Living magazine for 20 years. He is a member of the Renewable Energy Alliance of Louisville and is an organizer of the upcoming mayoral environmental forum. He wrote the book “Small Business, Big Heart — How One Family Redefined the Bottom Line,” and blogs on how decency succeeds in business and in life at paulwesslund.com.