State health officials are staging a series of public relations rallies cloaked as "All Stakeholder" meetings to discuss President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan. As explained in this space last month, a Jan. 14 meeting in Commerce City featured five panel experts who all supported the plan, which proposes federal mandates likely to close coal-fired electric plants, reduce mining and transportation jobs and require spending on emerging renewable technologies. The audience appeared selected, full of people who knew each other, with about 30 comments coming only from activists who supported the plan. In the hourslong meeting, not one person expressed skepticism or opposition. It smacked of propaganda.
Reality struck when the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment took the show to Brush, a rural eastern plains town where people work hard to earn a buck.
Four of five panel members were cheerleaders for the president's plan, which has the full support of Gov. John Hickenlooper. Panelist Kent Singer, an attorney and executive director of the Colorado Rural Electric Association, offered the panel's only balance. He said public utilities and electric cooperatives are supposed to provide reliable energy at a price households, farms, ranches and businesses can afford. The president's plan, he worries, would impose hardships.
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State's Clean Power rally backfires - Climate Dispatch
Reality struck when the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment took the show to Brush, a rural eastern plains town where people work hard to earn a buck.
Four of five panel members were cheerleaders for the president's plan, which has the full support of Gov. John Hickenlooper. Panelist Kent Singer, an attorney and executive director of the Colorado Rural Electric Association, offered the panel's only balance. He said public utilities and electric cooperatives are supposed to provide reliable energy at a price households, farms, ranches and businesses can afford. The president's plan, he worries, would impose hardships.
mo
State's Clean Power rally backfires - Climate Dispatch