How Georgia Power will profit from Hurricane Helene, from Consumer Advocate Patty Durrand

Hurricane Helene is going to cost you on your electricity bill. I want to start with that because when utilities rush to restore outages due to big storm events, they also rush to take control of the narrative. Storm bad! We good!

What they don’t say is that they contributed to worsening climate change and profit from the severe storms that result. Georgia Power is the reason that Hurricane Helene was as severe as it was. Had they acted responsibly about CO2 emissions when it became clear they warm the atmosphere in ways that are destructive we would not have had a Hurricane Helene, or it would have been much more mild. They are almost singularly the reason by funning millions of dollars into groups and lobbyists and nonprofits that fight climate change and spread misinformation. And they worked on both ends: confuse the public and block legislation. They knew they were lying, much like the tobacco executives who lied to Congress about cigarettes causing cancer.  

Southern Company also worked to block climate change legislation with lobbyists – massive numbers of lobbyists – they sent more lobbyists to Washington DC in 2009 to kill the Clean Energy plan than even the national utility trade association known as EEI sent, and EEI is headquartered in DC. Southern Company is headquartered in Atlanta. That’s some serious commitment to blocking climate change legislation on top of misinformation spending to confuse the public that no one knows what’s causing climate change, when everyone else did know, including them.

And they were successful. That’s why corporations have lobbyists. They wouldn’t do it if it didn’t work. And here we are.

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