It’s not only health care that is prompting rallies and counter rallies across North Carolina during the August congressional recess.

On Thursday, Energy Citizens, a coalition of industry groups, will hold a rally at the Greensboro Coliseum Complex, reports Rob Christensen. Greensboro is the home of freshman Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan.

The event is called “Rally for Jobs and Affordable Energy” and is one of a series of rallies being held in 19 states across the country.

The industry-sponsored rally centers on legislation in Congress designed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions often called cap and trade.

Meanwhile, a counter rally will be held across the street by a coalition of groups that wants Hagan to support legislation backed by Obama administration, which says it will create clean energy jobs and lesson dependence on foreign oil.

Environmental groups and their allies were circulating a memo from the American Petroleum Institute, the lobbying arm of the oil industry, which is organizing the rallies.

The memo says, in part: “The objective of these rallies is to put a human face on the impacts of unsound energy policy and to aim a loud message at those states’ U.S. Senators to avoid the mistakes embodied in the House climate bill and the Obama Administration’s tax increases on our industry.”