'Torn': Living With Top US Greenhouse Gas Spewing Power Plant

West Jefferson, United States, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 20th Apr, 2021 ) :The exhaust-belching smokestacks of America's most greenhouse gas-emitting power plant tower over Jennifer Chesser's neighborhood, but she'd likely fight to keep them from falling silent.

The James H. Miller Jr. site faces no immediate shutdown threat and has the backing of many locals because of the jobs it offers -- despite sending about as much planet warming carbon dioxide into the sky last year as 3.7 million cars.

"It's a double-edged sword for me," Chesser said of the coal-fired generator just northwest of Alabama's largest city Birmingham. "It's harming the planet but at the same time it helps us because it's what's making our living. So I'm torn." Coal is her family's business -- she's the daughter of a sixth-generation miner and her husband works in the industry too -- so a blow to Miller would be one against her personally.

"We don't have any other options," Chesser, a 46-year-old homemaker, told AFP.

The plant highlights a key problem in counteracting climate change -- even for people who accept it is happening, the threat can be overshadowed by pressing daily needs.

That ongoing battle will bring together world leaders this week for a virtual summit as President Joe Biden works to revitalize a global effort left in chaos by his predecessor Donald Trump.

Out at the Miller plant, workers' cars line the parking lot at the sprawling site along the Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River, where coal arrives by rail cars and deceptively innocent-looking white exhaust pours into the air day and night.