This is great, courtesy of the Augusta County Alliance and the All Pain, No Gain Campaign. The video has a group of really cool middle school kids in the Staunton/Augusta County, Virginia area speaking out against Dominion’s proposed Atlantic Coast Pipeline. The area these kids live in would be heavily impacted by the pipeline, and the kids were hearing a lot about it on the news. The topic also came up in their sixth-grade U.S. history class during a conversation about things going on in their community. They have attended pipeline-related events, and even spoke recently at the Augusta County Board of Supervisors’ public hearing about the impacts of the pipeline.
The kids decided that they wanted to learn more about the issue, so they contacted the Shomo family, whose century-old farm has about a mile of the proposed pipeline route running it. Three generations of the family (with a fourth already helping out!) currently operate the farm. These middle schoolers wanted to learn more about the pipeline’s impact on farms in Augusta County. Ultimately the kids wanted to get involved and took the initiative to perform a “rap” song about the pipeline. They also have some smart things to say, including that “this pipeline is a very bad idea….we need clean water to drink…if it does burst, then it will be a disaster…our drinking water could be contaminated…it’s something that needs to be reconsidered, because it doesn’t really benefit us at all.”
All true: this pipeline is a really bad idea, especially considering that alternatives already exist. First and foremost, that means energy efficiency, the cheapest form of energy by far (that you never have to produce in the first place). Second, it means solar power, both distributed and “utility scale,” both of which have seen their costs plummet in recent years, to the point that utility-scale solar in particular is competitive in many parts of the country with new fossil-fuel power plants. Finally, it means wind power, both onshore and offshore, which in Virginia is more than sufficient to power the entire state, particularly combined with energy efficiency and solar. Frankly, until ALL three of those things – energy efficiency, solar and wind – have been maxed out, there is no excuse whatsoever to be building new fossil fuel infrastructure. No matter what lame excuses we hear from Dominion Power and its bought-and-paid-for political pals.
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