COP18 (27/11/12) – Jim Dougherty, Director of Sierra Club talks about the group’s work in the US defeating coal fired power stations. He explains that the group has moved from an environmental group aimed at protecting wild spaces to one focused on pollution and now climate change and fossil fuels.
He says the group’s greatest success has been in stopping 147 of the 150 new coal-fired power stations that then President Bush said was needed in 2001.
Dougherty says that the Sierra Club want to see a focus placed on the conservation of energy and energy efficiency and then on renewable energy sources like wind and solar. However, in the real world, fracking has taken over in the US, he adds.
He explains how the Sierra Club once saw natural gas as a good stop gap fuel to use in the short term as the US moves from coal to renewables. But with fracking, and the environmental concerns that come along with this, they are now focusing on getting the process of extracting shale gas reformed to limit these impacts.