NC lawmakers: We can close the door on a pipeline in North Carolina | Opinion
Last Monday evening, the sun shone red and an eerie silence settled over the North Carolina Piedmont as smoke from Canadian wildfires hundreds of miles away overwhelmed our skies.
Every day we get news of more climate-related devastation. Record-breaking heat in Arizona. Flooding in Vermont. Lives and livelihoods ruined. And we know this is just the start. The climate crisis is upon us.
This cannot be the time to double-down on dirty, dangerous fossil fuels. Yet against the backdrop of climate chaos we see leaders in our state calling for just that. They are beholden to the profits of energy corporations at the expense of our people and our environment.
The latest bad idea is the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) Southgate extension — a 74-mile proposed fracked gas pipeline that will further the environmental harm North Carolina is already experiencing. The MVP is designed to carry fracked gas about 300 miles from West Virginia to southern Virginia. The Southgate extension would stretch from there into central North Carolina.
This is not the time to invest in more fossil fuels. They are a bad investment for our climate and for our economy. Current market forces favor lower-cost, renewable clean energy, which is also a better option for ratepayers. Even a gas industry analyst pointed out that the original purpose of the pipeline was to sell gas at a higher price, ultimately raising prices across Appalachia. We know rising energy costs hurt those who can least afford it.
The pipeline with its myriad stream crossings, and deforestation will pollute our waterways, fragment ecosystems, and devastate our forests. Destroying stream buffers will lead to more flooding — an issue made all the more pressing with our changing climate and extreme weather.
And, the pipeline will mean massive expropriation of private property through eminent domain — fragmenting and displacing communities in the face of vehement grassroots opposition.
Despite all this, there is a renewed push to move the pipeline extension forward. The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently opened a public comment process to decide whether to extend the permit needed to allow the Southgate project to move forward. And so it’s time to make our voices heard.
We have been proud to join more than 45 N.C. legislators who have already written to FERC urging them to deny the Mountain Valley Pipeline’s Southgate extension request.
We ask you to join us in this fight.
Over the coming years we are going to have to be loud and fight on multiple fronts if we are to avoid the worst of the climate crisis. We will have to speak up in the state legislature, we will have to talk with our friends and neighbors, we will have to be thoughtful about where we shop and how we travel. We will have to speak up at the local, state and federal level to tell our government that the future we want for our children must be built today. We need a clean, vibrant, economically prosperous future where we invest in new technologies and move away from the failed dinosaur policies of the past.
As N.C. state lawmakers we urge you to stand with us in this fight and to submit your own comments to FERC asking them to deny the MVP Southgate extension. North Carolina residents can submit comments to FERC by 5 p.m. on July 24.
Pricey Harrison is a representative in the N.C. House who represents District 61, which includes parts of Guilford County. State Sen. Graig Meyer represents District 23, which includes Caswell, Orange, Person counties.
