Dirty Coal

All this talk of "clean coal" also has to stop. Politicians (and that includes Mr. Obama!) seem to have completely ignored the dirt and destruction of the coal mines in Appalachia and other places when they praise the concept. Even if someone did figure out the technology for clean coal (which is next to impossible on the scale needed) the mines will still be destroying one of our most beautiful landscapes, the mountains of Appalachia, and the homes and homelands of (poor!) people who have lived there for generations! I understand that the mountains they are removing are never the ones in full view of the Interstates and the homes of the comfortable middle classes of West Virginia, Kentucky and Tennessee, who tend to ignore the destruction going on in their own states, and vote what the Big Coal owned media tell them to do.

NPR ran a "conversation" about this as well: Gore Group, Industry Butt Heads Over 'Clean Coal' but Gore also ignores the major issue. As Teri Blanton wrote me:

I just don’t like it when the argument gets stuck here. Sequestering the carbon still does not make coal clean....unfortunately the focus is just on what comes out of the stacks as long as they keep this debate going the true cost of coal does not get to surface like the destruction of the oldest mountains on earth, the desert and the upper mid west farmland. and the destruction of fresh water resources.
Please go to the [NPR] site and blog about it or write about. Someone tell Al Gore to look at the entire death march of coal....

That is what I am trying to do here on my blog, as well as is in comments I leave on other blogs.

You can watch the ad Al Gore is sponsoring on "Clean" Coal, or read a lot of facts about "Clean Coal" on a site sponsored by the We Can Solve It campaign from the Reality Coalition (a project of the Alliance for Climate Protection, with support from our friends at the The League of Conservation Voters (LCV), the National Wildlife Federation (NWF), Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), and the Sierra Club.)

But, as Teri points out, this organization unfortunately does not include mountaintop removal in its case against "Clean Coal." See also The Dirty Side of Coal from Scientific American.

Please check out my other entries on this topic through my labels list.
This is one of 4 blog entries I've written today on environmental issues. Please read all of them!