Clean energy quest worries coal, oil state leaders

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. (AP) — As Congress grapples with legislation on carbon emissions to counter global warming — a looming problem that threatens global security — Southern governors fear their region’s abundant coal, oil and natural gas supplies will be forsaken in the quest for new sources of energy.

A Southern Governors Association panel heard Saturday that global warming, left unchecked, threatens peace worldwide and the safety, security and economies of their states.

Former Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia and retired Air Force Gen. Rich Engel, director of the National Intelligence Council’s Climate Change and State Stability Program, presented studies showing that global competition for scarce resources and devastating new climate shifts ranging from droughts to melting polar ice caps will foster conflict, instability and terrorism.

Somalia’s genocide and chaos illustrate how climate disasters create a far-reaching menace, Warner said. Somalia today serves as a base and hideout for pirates who hijack global shipping in the Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean.

“It was in the grips of a strong, prolonged drought, and they simply did not have the food and the resources for that government to provide for the wants of the people, so that spread into conflict and soon that whole government collapsed and terrorists were fighting to take over,” said Warner, who retired earlier this year after 30 years in the Senate.

That puts pressure on America’s military, particularly in troubled regions such as the Middle East that generate the bulk of the world’s petroleum, Warner told about a dozen governors attending a three-day conference in Virginia’s Colonial capital.

Closer to home, however, it can expose more of the United States — particularly the South — to superstorms such as Hurricane Katrina and lay waste to agriculture that feeds and clothes the nation and much of the world, Engel said.

Experts predict more conflict among over fresh water supplies similar to the water rights dispute between Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

Even a 3.5-inch predicted increase in the mean sea level by 2030 from polar melting will wreak havoc on ports and military installations such as the world’s largest U.S. Navy base at Norfolk, Engel said.

If the United States doesn’t enact clean energy legislation, Warner and Engel said, global economic giants such as China and India never will. And despite its costs, they said, the bill to states from a worsening climate will become unmanageable.

The cap-and-trade energy bill now before Congress establishes incentives for new technologies such as wind and solar power and new fuels such as diesel from algae. But it holds little appeal to Gulf Coast and Appalachian states that provide most of America’s domestic energy, governors from those regions said.

West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin and Gov. Steven L. Beshear of Kentucky, both Democrats, said the bill their own party is pushing ignores support for the carbon-capture technology necessary to make their states’ rich coal reserves viable.

“We embrace the change,” Manchin said. “Do I agree exactly with the way the bills have come out? No, I don’t. They’ve identified and villainized (coal), but they haven’t fixed anything.”

Beshear said the bill burdens Southern energy-producing states with too much of the costs.

“Right now the approach of some seems to be to distribute most of that cost on those of us that produce the energy, and we feel it ought to be spread equitably among those that produce it and those that use it,” he said.

Alabama Gov. Bob Riley, a Republican who takes over as SGA’s chairman after the conference, said the rest of the nation has been content to let Southern states supply energy they use, particularly natural gas.

“The rest of the country has somewhat taken the position ’not in our back yard.’ We don’t drill of the East Coast or Florida or the West Coast. What the South has done is say we want to be a participant in this, but I don’t believe that participation now should penalize us,” Riley said.