Burning the Future: Shedding Light on the Destructive Wood Pellet Industry in North Carolina
On September 30, 2023, the Rachel Carson Council (RCC) and the Southern Forests Conservation Coalition (SFCC) led a cruise down Wilmington, North Carolina’s Cape Fear river to expose the environmental health and ecological wreckage caused by the wood pellet industry. The world’s largest producer of wood pellets, Enviva, has laid waste to thousands of acres of forest in North Carolina and throughout the United States Southeast, clear cutting trees that crucially serve as carbon storage, sickening communities from pollutants, and seriously debilitating coastal ecosystems. RCC President & CEO Dr. Bob Musil highlighted Enviva’s facilities and the damage they’ve wrought while educating participants about the public health and climate implications of the practice of producing wood pellets, transporting them internationally, and ultimately combusting them for fuel. He left them with a critical call to action: join the RCC and the SFCC in our efforts to eliminate state subsidies for the industry and ensure federal funding from packages like the Inflation Reduction Act don’t go toward this greenwashing industry.
Burning the Future from Conch Salad TV on Vimeo.
