Local politics, the county, and the world, as viewed by Tammy Maygra
Tammy's views are her own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of Bill Eagle, his pastor, Tammy's neighbors, Earl Fisher, Betsy Johnson, Joe Corsiglia, President Obama, Tony Hyde, Pat Robertson, Debi Corsiglia's dog, or Claudia Eagle's Cats. This Tammy's Take (with the exception of this disclaimer) is not paid for or written by, or reviewed by anyone but Tammy and she refuses to be bullied by anyone.

Citigroup is the top financier for the U.S. coal-fired power plant groups. There are $6.5 billion in loans to the coal fired plants. Barclays is a huge financier of mountaintop removal known as (MTR) coal mining. While these US conglomerates continue to invest in dirty fossil fuels and with their help degrade our global climate. There are positive moves coming from Wells Fargo and JPMorgan.

Chase both committed to terminate their financial associations with major MTR coal mining companies. Goldman Sachs is also stepping away from the highly controversial Gateway Pacific Coal Export Terminal proposal in the environmentally sensitive Puget Sound.  These other institutions Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and PNC Financial all continued the shameful financing of MTR.

More lending intuitions are distancing themselves from fossil fuels and more groups are leaning toward cleaner energy. Leading banks are beginning to plan for a carbon-constrained future by moving away from companies that pollute public water supplies, threaten our climate, and investments that increasingly put shareholders at risk. Any company that is still banking on coal will begin to lose huge investments, it is just a matter of time and any company that is still banking on coal has not paid attention and cares little for their stockholders.

The coal industry's impact on water contamination is for selenium pollution from their MTR mines; their action has caused very costly lawsuits. After exposing these pollution problems there are many in the coal industry that has filed bankruptcy, including risky coal power plant transactions these bad decisions have finally caught up with these greedy companies.

"Mountaintop removal coal mining is caustic not only to the local environment but to the economy and health of the entire nation and eventually the entire planet. Financially prohibitive fines and settlements made against many of these coal companies have made MTR a terrible money losing investment for the American banking industry."

The only way to stop MTR is to stop financing these horrific companies. Banks need to encourage companies to develop earth friendly energy sources and then open up lending to accommodate new innovative companies. We must start somewhere and we all understand that money talks. We can force companies to become earth friendly without them losing their scared all mighty dollar. I figure it is a win for everybody. The time has come that we must do something- the longer we wait the worse our climate change will be. And if you haven't noticed we don't have another planet to live on so we better do right by this one. Stopping the mining and burning of coal is a start and the stopping of fracking is step two.