Coal foes, global-warming skeptics defeat carbon-sequestration experiment in rural Ohio

As Washington, D. C., lawmakers debate whether carbon sequestration technology can be used to support coal in the context of a national climate bill, a battle in rural Ohio may offer important lessons about the future of the technology. Residents of Centerville, Ohio, "had never heard of 'carbon sequestration,'" Sarah Gardner of Marketplace reports. "But in 2008, scientists from Battelle, a major research and development firm, came to call. They wanted to demonstrate that you could capture and bury CO2 emissions miles beneath the earth. The government is looking to apply the technology widely to burning coal."

"A lot of people did not even believe in global warming," Christine Chalmers, an editor with the local newspaper, The Daily Advocate, told Gardner. "So they just thought it was a bunch of garbage." By 2009 "a couple of Internet-savvy grandmothers had started Citizens Against CO2 Sequestration," Gardner writes. "This is our home. We live here. Those people don't live here," co-founder Jan Teaford wrote the group's blog. "They're never going to live here, and we felt we had a right to protect it and we should have a say in what goes on here."

The group wrote letters to the editor, knocked on doors, held a prayer rally and peppered the town with hundreds of lawn signs reading "No CO2 Waste in Darke County," Gardner reports. On August 19, 2009, Battelle scrapped the project, citing "business considerations." Battelle says it will move the project elsewhere, but Greenville campaign represented a union between strange bedfellows. Kerwin Olson, who Gardner describes as a "dyed-in-the wool liberal activist," was among those helping the locals, not because he shared their fears relating to potential earthquakes or water contamination, but because he feels investment in carbon sequestration is "nothing more than propping up dirty coal."

Still other environmental groups, like the Ohio Environmental Council, support the technology. "We feel as though the science is dire and we are focused on getting massive reductions on a very fast timetable," the council's Nolan Moser told Gardner. "And to do that you've got to deal with major emission producers." Olson, explained the Greenville campaign offers an important lesson for future protests: "The main thing I told them was that all politics are local," he said. "And that you have a much better shot at killing this thing dealing with your local officials." Read Gardner's three-part series here: part one, part two, part three.