The Southern Company, the parent company of Georgia Power, as well as of Alabama, Mississippi and Gulf Power. Atlanta has now surpassed Los Angeles as the number one city in the country for air pollution. Every summer now there are increasing numbers of red-alert days, when the air is so bad that children are cautioned not to play outside. Strenuous exercise, whether from work or play, is discouraged.
Respiratory diseases are on the increase.
While the focus has been on automobile emissions, a coalition of environmental groups says that the Southern Company emits as much carbon dioxide, nitrogen oxide, sulfur dioxide and mercury into the air in one year as 17 million cars. No other company is more polluting, and no other company fights harder to resist changing its power-generation methods to produce energy that is cleaner and more environmentally friendly. The Southern Company has advised its shareholders to vote against a green power initiative by Robert Mills of Washington that would increase the company's reliance upon solar and wind power to 20 percent during the next 20 years. Southern now relies upon solar and wind power for less than 1 percent of its total power generation. And now for the rest of the story.