Insights from Gautama Mehta, Climate Reporter for The Macon Telegraph
Posting: Tuesday, March 28, 2023
Passionate in his reporting, Gautama Mehta writes for The Macon Telegraph on the climate stories most important to Georgian residents.
Gautama Mehta, who has previously worked with The Biloxi Sun Herald along with Coda Story, has been reporting on climate issues for Georgians at The Macon Telegraph.
Mehta has reached out to state representatives, talked with a variety of community members and tackled big topics such as two lawsuits related to pollution that were connected to Plant Scherer and the efforts in the General Assembly to restrict future mining efforts in the Okefenokee Swamp.
As of March 2023, Mehta has managed to rack up 14,372 pageviews in Macon and has had his lead-testing story picked up by The Associated Press.
We reached out to Mr. Mehta for insights on the reporting he’s done so far.
Gautama Mehta
Climate Reporter
Q. What major takeaways have you seen from your climate reporting in the Georgia area?
Many of the factors affecting the development of climate policy, and in particular around the deployment of clean energy, have little to do with the challenge of overcoming climate denialism. Due to a combination of the recent influx of federal funding and international business investment in clean energy across the Southeast, politicians are charging ahead with projects aimed at decarbonization while avoiding mention of global warming as a motivation.
Coverage of local environmental issues requires an understanding of how little-known state agencies work and where they sometimes fall short. I’ve written about environmental controversies in places like Jesup, Juliette, and Folkston — and all of these are as many local stories as stories about permitting, because of how, since the 1970s, environmental law places much of the actual responsibility for determining policy not in the hands of lawmakers but of regulators.
Q: Do you have a certain approach when developing stories to cover?
I try to fill the gaps in the state’s existing climate coverage and to make the sometimes abstract issues of climate and energy accessible to readers who aren’t steeped in policy questions by focusing on how they most immediately affect ordinary Georgians. I try to avoid “Advocates say…” stories in which most of the quotes come from people whose job is to talk to journalists; the views and insights of ordinary people are often significant and newsworthy.
I also try to take a step back and provide wider context when daily news stories on, say, the energy beat, might appear arcane to less informed readers. So, in my coverage of last year’s Georgia Power rate
hike, I sought to explain how Georgia’s regulated energy system grants the power company a monopoly regulated by a little known elected body (the Public Service System) — and why this leads both to the possibility of regulatory capture (and potentially higher rates for our readers) and to the potential for greater investments in climate mitigation than might be achievable under a freer market system, since the utility is guaranteed a profit rate.
Q. You visited conservationists and community leaders about the mining impact at the Okefenokee swamp. Talk about your experience doing that.
On a fascinating reporting trip to the far southeastern corner of Georgia, I wanted to find out what the Okefenokee Swamp, a massive ecological preserve which locals say is threatened by a nearby planned titanium mine, actually means to the people who live near it. The Baptist pastor of a predominantly Black congregation in Folkston told me the fight to protect the Okefenokee has brought Black residents, many of whom didn’t grow up being taken on camping trips into the swamp, into a deeper relationship with their environment—a sense of stewardship that has not been historically accessible to those excluded from many aspects of citizenhood. The mayor of Fargo, GA, a Trump-supporting union ironworker from New England, took me on a boat into the swamp and told me his lifelong love of the Okefenokee caused him to move to Georgia after he retired — and, now, to fight for its protection. And an elderly pair of sisters who were born in a log cabin in the swamp before it was made into a wildlife reserve in the 1950s told me about how they had grown up as the daughters of the fishing concession manager, entertaining tourists by teasing alligators out of the water with fish on a stick.
Q: Georgians have differing views about climate issues. What are some of the contrasts you’ve found - and how do you try to bridge them?
There are a lot of people across the political spectrum who are deeply invested in conservation efforts, fighting pollution, and lowering energy rates — all of which can sometimes dovetail with the decarbonization program needed to mitigate global warming, and sometimes lead to tensions in the environmental coalitions that form around these issues. Local environmental concerns are pitted against efforts to build electric vehicles or a solar grid when some nearby residents fight industrial projects like the Rivian plant in Morgan County. Meanwhile, environmental issues also bring surprising coalitions into being. I recently reported on a Republican-led legislative effort, backed by environmental advocates and opposed by Georgia Power, to expand residential rooftop solar — and found the state senate’s top Democrat unable to answer the question of why she had backed off her support for this effort.
Q. Georgia is a diverse energy industry, from nuclear to wood pellets to solar. What can Georgia’s conversations about energy teach other states?
Nuclear energy can still be built in the US, and will provide carbon-free baseload energy — but it’s expensive and difficult. The only nuclear reactors under construction in the country are in Georgia, and their construction bankrupted Westinghouse. As these reactors come online, they should be seen as a significant test case for whether the nation can feasibly return to nuclear energy as part of its decarbonization strategy.
The energy transition is happening, even in red states, but what needs to be addressed is its punishing impact on low-income energy consumers whose rates are skyrocketing and on those who depend on fossil fuel production for their livelihoods — and the political fallout of these trends. In Monroe County, not far from Macon, there is local resentment of environmental advocates who are seen (I think unfairly) as responsible for the imminent closure of the nearby Plant Scherer, once North America’s largest coal plant, which has employed local residents for generations and provides the county a hefty chunk of its tax base. This may be responsible for some residents’ skepticism of the plant’s pollution of the nearby drinking water with toxic waste from its coal ash pond.
There are many ways a state can make money off the world’s attempts to wean itself off fossil fuels — and Georgia seems to be trying hard to do so. One remarkable example is the growth of the wood pellet industry across the Southeast over the last decade. Previously too inefficient an energy production method to be very profitable, wood pellet energy has become a massive revenue source in the US as European states have adopted renewables targets which loosely define “renewables” to include wood pellets, on the argument that forests can be regrown — but overlooking the fact that they take decades to do so, and may not necessarily absorb the amount of carbon that is emitted with the burning of the wood.
About The Macon Telegraph: The Telegraph, frequently called The Macon Telegraph, is the primary print news organ in Middle Georgia. It is the third-largest newspaper in the State of Georgia (after the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Augusta Chronicle). Founded in 1826, The Telegraph has undergone several name changes, mergers, and publishers. Online: www.macon.com
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