Posted
Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said
he will contribute $US500 million ($715 million) toward closing
coal-fired power plants across the United States, in a clash with White
House efforts to revive a fossil fuel blamed for climate change.
Key points:
- The pledge has been deemed the largest philanthropic effort to combat climate change in history
- Bloomberg was last year the UN Secretary General's special envoy on climate change
- The billionaire's initiative will push for a transition to natural gas plants rather than coal
The billionaire's foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, said its Beyond Carbon initiative would lobby to close about 250 coal-fired power plants by 2030 and make the country fully reliant on clean energy.
"We're in a race against time with climate change, and yet there is virtually no hope of bold federal action on this issue for at least another two years," he said, referring to when US President Donald Trump's term in office ends.
The UN World Meteorological Organisation said in November global temperatures were on course for an increase of 3–5 degrees Celsius this century, far overshooting a global target of limiting the increase to 2C or less.
Mr Trump has vowed to pull the US out of a 2015 global accord to fight climate change and has backed continuing planet-warming extraction and use of fossil fuels.
The donation by Mr Bloomberg, who was tapped last year to become the UN Secretary General's special envoy for cities and climate change, was the "largest-ever philanthropic effort to fight the climate crisis", his philanthropic group said in a statement.
Push towards natural gas, 'climate champions'
Bloomberg Philanthropies will team up with environmental US non-profit the Sierra Club to focus on state-level action aimed at closing coal plants and halting a "rush to build new [natural] gas plants," it said.Natural gas, like coal, emits greenhouse gas, but at a lower rate.
"We will employ advocacy, legal and electoral strategies," Mr Bloomberg said in a statement.Specifically, Beyond Carbon will strive to pass clean energy laws and "work to elect state and local candidates who are climate champions", it said in a statement.
Data from the US Energy Information Administration has shown the share of US power plants powered by coal has plummeted in the last decade, from about 600 in 2007 to about 360 a decade later.
The Sierra Club, which tallies coal-fired power plants nationwide, estimates there are 241 remaining.
"It's definitely a step in the right direction," said Brian Greenhill, an associate professor of political science at the University at Albany.
"[But] if it's received as a war on coal miners then it will just generate a backlash", he warned.
Mr Bloomberg, 77, served three terms as Mayor of New York before stepping down in 2013.
ABC/Reuters
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