By Richard Martin, Contributing Editor

In Copenhagen over the weekend, more than a thousand climate activists attempted (but failed) to shut down a coal-fired power plant owned by the Swedish energy producer Vattenfall.

“The protesters said they had aimed to stop operations at the power plant … in order to draw attention to their demands for stronger climate policies from politicians and energy companies before the U.N. climate conference in December in Copenhagen,” reported the Associated Press.   

Meanwhile, closer to home, a smaller number of protesters demonstrated on the CU campus, in Boulder, demanding that the university sever its ties to the coal industry. Recently designated by the Sierra Club as the greenest college campus in America, CU nevertheless still buys “more than three-quarters of its electricity from Xcel Energy, which generates about 80 percent of its power from burning coal,” the Daily Camera observed.

These stories might be seen as the wacky protests of a fringe of enviro-hippies, except that major corporations including Nike, Levi Strauss & Co., Starbucks Corp. and utilities like PG&E Corp. are getting in on the act. PG&E last week became the second utility to recently leave the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the body’s policy of denying climate change caused by man-made sources of carbon. “Extreme rhetoric and obstructionist tactics seem to increasingly market the Chamber’s public stance on this issue,” wrote PG&E CEO Peter Darbee in a letter to Thomas Donohue, head of the U.S. Chamber, announcing his decision.

These public actions demonstrate that opposition to action on global warming, and continued reliance on carbon-intensive forms of energy, particularly coal, are swiftly becoming socially unacceptable – a situation that was not true as little as one year ago. Companies with ties to the coal industry, and bodies like the Chamber (not to mention major oil companies) that continue to obstruct decisive action to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, are now facing what economists call a “reputation cost,” or a decline in valuation related to public perceptions.

“All shareholders in America should ask their C.E.O.’s why they still belong to the Chamber,” wrote New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman yesterday.

Along with Levi Strauss and Starbucks, Nike is a member of the Business for Innovative Climate & Energy Policy coalition (BICEP),  a business group formed earlier this year to work toward a new energy policy.

The costs of clinging to the status quo are not likely to be counted in reputation alone. Xcel Energy is one of five utilities named in a lawsuit by eight states that seeks damages for harming the environment by burning fossil fuels, particularly coal. Dismissed in 2005 by a U.S. District Court Judge, the lawsuit was reinstated last week by the U.S. Appeals Court.  

“The lawsuit against American Electric Power Co Inc, Southern Co, Xcel Energy Inc, Cinergy Corp and the Tennessee Valley Authority public power system, argued that greenhouse gas emissions from their plants were a public nuisance and would cause irreparable harm to property,” reported Reuters.

The utilities have argued that “Litigation is not the best way to address climate issues,” as an AEP spokesman said in response to the appeals court ruling. Regardless, along with the increasing anti-coal protests, the lawsuit represents a groundswell of public outrage that not enough is being done by legislators and policy-makers to avert a global warming catastrophe. “Instead of a strategic response, too many of our politicians are still trapped in their own dumb-as-we-wanna-be bubble,” Friedman remarks, “where we’re always No. 1, and where the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, having sold its soul to the old coal and oil industries, uses its influence to prevent Congress from passing legislation to really spur renewables.”

Sometimes such gradual-yet-sudden changes in public opinion are enough to alter the course of a nation. It happened with the Vietnam War, and it happened again with the Bush Administration’s policies in the so-called “war on terror.” If I were a director on the board of a big U.S. utility this morning, I’d be looking hard at my company’s strategic response.

 In an email to Colorado Energy News, Xcel Energy’s Joe Fuentes points out that the utility company’s fuel mix for Colorado is: 57 percent coal; 31.5 percent natural gas; 9.8 percent wind; and the rest from solar, hydroelectric, bio-mass/waste, nuclear and oil.