The Empire Strikes Back: Entergy Sends Hired Gun to State House

The good news is that the House Natural Resources Committee has taken up H.127, our bill to develop clean, safe and affordable power for Vermont. You can find out more about the bill through VPIRG’s website here. The bad news is that almost instantly they started to hear from special interest supporters of the energy status quo.

First up was Entergy Nuclear, corporate owners of Vermont Yankee. Entergy paid for Patrick Moore, who claims to be a founder of Greenpeace, to testify before the committee in favor of continued reliance on nuclear power. VPIRG’s own advocate James Moore (definitely, definitely no relation), hit back fast on WCAX last night. You can read the news story here.

Moore also showed up yesterday in Brattleboro at a hastily scheduled Nuclear Regulatory Committee hearing that supported re-licensing of Yankee. Or was it Pilgrim, a Nuclear plant in New York? The NRC seemed confused about which nuclear power plant they were supposed to be regulating, but either way -- Patrick Moore and contractors for the NRC assured the crowd -- there is no reason to be concerned. The Brattleboro Reformer has the story here.

Patrick Moore was indeed a member and director of Greenpeace international in the 1980s, but he left his activist roots far behind when he founded Greenspirit Strategies. Since starting his career as a high-paid defender of corporate polluters, he’s defended nuclear power, GMO crops, strip mining and chemical companies. It seems like there’s almost no polluter he won’t defend if the money is right. You can read more about his career at SourceWatch, a project of the non-profit, non-partisan, center for media and democracy.