The Thermals support the Mercury Falling plan

Consensus is building around the nation for lower mercury emissions in Jacksonville. The latest to sign on is Portland, Oregon band The Thermals. Here's what lead singer/guitarist Hutch Harris had to say in a recent interview with Mercury Falling...

You were offered a lot of money to have one of your songs featured in a Hummer ad, but you said no. Why? Don't you know how important money is?

I actually hadn't realized how important money is until right now. I better call Hummer back and give 'em the go-ahead. But seriously, what could be worse than shilling for Hummer? Sound tracking army recruitment ads? How about a public service ad with the simple message, "Destroy the planet now! Faster!"

Non-thermal plasma based removal could possibly remove over 90 percent of mercury emissions from existing coal-fired utility boilers to provide clean, competitively priced power from existing coal-fired generating plants. Which brings us to our next question, where did you get the name for the band? Was the original name "non-thermal plasma based removal,"and you just shortened it to The Thermals?

Well, these questions have more "funny" than I expected. The original name for the band was The Non-Thermals, but we decided The Thermals was catchier. We're all for reducing mercury emissions, but really we named ourselves for hot air and cute underwear.

As the saying goes, you can't fight city hall. Well, Mercury Falling isn't trying to fight anyone, just convince politicians and our public power company that there's a better way, as visionary activists have done throughout our history. What activists most inspire you?

I'm not going to name any because I don't want to be a hypocrite. We are not activists by any means. We've received a lot of positive attention for turning down Hummer's money, but remember we didn't do anything. We did nothing and got a lot of credit for it. We didn't get up on a soapbox to trash Hummer or to take a stand, for or against anything. We made a very personal decision, so we ourselves wouldn't feel like disgusting whores. It's brilliant that so many people have been inspired by our decision, but it is a very small, simple thing in our eyes.