"Clean" Coal and the Candidates

Mountain near Rawl, West Virginia
Originally uploaded by iLoveMountains.org.

Like most "true believer" environmentalists, I would prefer to phase out coal power ASAP, shut down and mothball all atomic energy plants, "Conserve, Baby, Conserve" instead of drilling in the ANWAR, off our coasts and on public lands (which, I thought, belong to all of us!)

Sustainable energy is here

Of course, I'm not a "naysayer!" There are alternatives for all these nasty power sources, and we can be Energy Independent much quicker if we rapidly install wind and solar, the newest in hydroelectric technology, which doesn't involve building dams, and develop geothermal energy (as long as it doesn't destroy natural areas,) bio diesel and other biofuels (with their cradle-to-grave lifecycle is thoroughly vetted.) Many books have been written about this, environmental groups have lobbied, and I have sent every petition I've been asked to send.

Why don't those politicians understand?

But still politicians, including Presidential candidates for both parties, 3/4 of whom profess a great interest in sustainable fuels, and all 4 in energy independence, keep talking about "clean" coal (as well as nuclear and off-shore drilling, which are not the story I want to tell today.)

Gotta do something!

In desperation I have sent emails to various environmental organizations with an interest in this (like the Sierra Club (see http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200701/coal.asp,) Appalachian Voices, ILoveMountains.org and others,) asking why they haven't been able to convince the candidates that there's no such thing as "clean" coal. But either they haven't responded, or they are just as frustrated as I am.

How can coal be clean?

In case you can't understand why anyone could get the idea that coal could be clean, you might want to read about this concept at wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_coal. But be sure to scroll all the way down to the bottom to read the Criticism section as well. "Clean" coal technology would be a dream come true - there's lots of coal, of course, both here and in China, among other places. But it just can't be done.

Do the politicians know something I don't?

To try to figure out why the candidates aren't listening, I decided to go to the blog area of http://my.barackobama.com/ to see what people were writing about coal. That's when my eyes were opened by this message from Ellen in Huntington, WV and the comments that followed:

The local NBC affiliate in Huntington, WV has a headline: VP Candidate Biden Says No to Coal Plants in U.S. The people here were starting to get used to the idea of voting for Obama, the local union UMWA staged a walk out to protest the NRA false claims about his gun stance! So I was hopeful that Obama would at least get a few votes. THIS ONE HEADLINE will give everyone of those on the fence or grudgingly going Obama the excuse they needed to vote McCain. With all the "I heart coal" bumper stickers, etc. this will be the end. UNLESS there is swift action, not just from spokespeople, but from the candidate, to ease their minds about the #$% coal industry. The article is complete with response from the Republican representative from the area.
This off-the-cuff one line is a game changer here in the coal fields. It is time to stand up and actually try to win WV or let those working so hard to do it FOR them give it up.

An article called Frank talk of Obama and race in Virginia in today's LATimes opened my eyes a little more. The coal miners' union UMWA is doing all that it can to get Obama elected, because they figure Democratic policies are better for their members than the other party's. But it stands to reason that coal is their livelihood, for better or for worse. We environmentals in their eyes are planning to take away their source of income.

Is there a win/win situation?

In our eyes, of course, we are saving them from early death from black lung, polluted water, coal dust, mountain top removal and the loss of their favorite fishing streams and hunting grounds. But we haven't provided them with alternative ways to support their families. Before we can remove coal as an energy source, we have to replace it in the local economy.

Now the large coal mining companies, like Massey, have started doing this all by themselves. With the new methods of mining they need far fewer miners than before. When they can, they fire all the union miners (I have my information from the book Coal River.) The miners that have been laid off in these areas are beginning to find other ways to support themselves and their families, and discovering that life doesn't have to be all coal dust and black lung. They are also getting very tired of losing their fishing streams to good topsoil shoved into the valleys. They are devastated when a family graveyard that has been kept for over a century is part of the earth that is moved. And of course, there is a lot of ill will between those guys on the big earth movers, who are non-union, and the local guys who got laid off.

Who are these West Virginians (or western Virginians, or Kentuckians or Tennesseeans) who depend on coal? Is it more the shareholders of the mining companies, their lawyers and everyone else who has a livelihood from the mines, but doesn't have to experience the destruction and ill health? Are they even Democratic voters?

What are the alternatives?

Originally uploaded by iLoveMountains.org.

While I was looking through pictures on Flickr to find an illustration for this article, I came upon this picture of windmills on the mountaintops providing energy, rather than relying on the coal under them. And I found a website http://www.coalrivergroup.com/ devoted to tourism along the Coal River. So local people are looking for local alternatives to mining coal. Coal River Mountain Watch is looking for alternatives to destruction in green jobs.

I think there are a lot of residents of Appalachia who would welcome politicians who want to help them get beyond the destruction and ill health of coal - maybe not the ones who have the money to lobby or to contribute to politicians - but the real Americans who live outside the cities. the ones who are doing the hard work - or not, as their jobs disappear along with their hunting grounds. I think they'd be delighted with a new green job, and better health and opportunities for their children. Let's support the people! And we don't need coal to do it!

Noise

Army Of Gardeners
Originally uploaded by Joe Shlabotnik.

It's been a month since I wrote last. I guess nothing has really caught my attention enough to write. However today is Tuesday, the day the gardeners come to our condo complex. That reminded me that I've been wanting to write about NOISE for a long time. (The picture isn't from here. I'm assuming ours have questionable residency, so I won't embarrass them.) Tuesdays I have to keep windows and doors closed if I want to talk with someone on the phone (or event think.) Tuesdays I can't even use the pool, because they seem to pick the time I want to swim to carefully blow every last leaf from the perimeter of the pool. I tried once, but I had to swim on my back the whole time to keep my ears under water!

So every Tuesday we get leaf blowers, lawn movers, tree trimmers and other noisemakers. And they're not just noisemakers. The beds around the condos are swept down to bare earth. Outside ours, the surface of the ground is about 5 inches lower than the bottom of the patio wall. I assume the dirt has been blown off! So a couple of times a year they go around adding blue fertilizer to replace all the great nutrients they've blown off.

When I have a garden, I put all the leaves in the garden as mulch, which keeps in the water and finally provides nutrients as well. What's the sense in removing perfectly good mulch?

Cambridge sans leafblowers.
Originally uploaded by janrem.

I have complained to the Management Service about the leaf blowers, and even suggested that we put in landscaping that doesn't need so much water, pesticides, fertilers and care. So far they have actually spread a little more mulch around in the beds, and they don't chase every last leaf out of them either. I've also seen a few rakes in action, too, like in this picture (which I also found on Flickr.) I have even discovered that I can now sweep a few leaves from the patio into the beds and they get to stay there as potential mulch.

I may be particularly sensitive to noise, but how about the neighbor's boom box which appears to be on the common wall with our living room?

Or the time I was captive audience to a very loud preacher while I was waiting under a long curved canopy in line to get checked before reporting to jury duty. He loved the location - lots of potential convertees, and an incredible reverberating sound. Sort of like singing in the shower, with audience.

Of course in an area with condos and apartments like this there are car alarms going off regularly. And about every other condo here has a little yappy dog in the patio all day, announcing every single person walking by, like me, or the Parcel Post man, the Mormon missionaries - or maybe even real intruders. They don't seem to bark at the gardeners though any more.

And the noise to top all other noises happens about every other night usually after I go to bed. Behind our condo are the loading docks for a shopping mall, connected to the parking areas. The street cleaner guy comes and uses this area as a starting place to sweep the entire parking lot, sometime between 11 pm and 4 am, apparently with no particular plan. Now usually this is just slight background noise, because the bedroom is on the other side. But if I'm tossing and turning for some reason (my restless legs, usually) I go sleep on a couch in my office, which looks out over this area. And it seems like he always picks one of those nights to do his noisy stuff.

Or how about the weekends when the local airfield does airshows, with little planes swooping down over us, or the nights when the police helicopters are out looking for someone (who is probably hiding under the tree on our patio.)

I should get some earplugs, I know, but it would be nice to live in a world where this wasn't necessary!

Like we experienced this summer we spent a week at a cottage on a lake in Maine (I'm sure there's a post about it somewhere here.) During the week, the only boats on the lake were canoes and kayaks, and the only noise was screaming campers from the girls' camp far across the lake. Nights were absolutely quiet except for an occasional loon calling. Some of our visitors found it too quiet! But come weekend, everyone had his jetskis, motorboats and other noisemakers out in full force. Good day to climb the mountain.

Every Third Bite

It's been a long time since I got inspired to write in my blog. But then today I read this article EPA Sued for Bee Colony Collapse Cover-Up and thought it was time to get back.
Certainly honey is the sun's energy as our nourishment. I was fascinated by the beekeepers in the video, and horrified about the news about this new pesticide that farmers have been mislead to use, while it is killing the major thing they need so their plants can be productive!

The video also mentions some of the things that large commericial pollinating beekeepers are doing which may also be causing a collapse.
Humans are sure stupic when it comes to managing nature!

Home grown tomatoes

Home grown tomatoes
Originally uploaded by bonbayel.

I promised I'd write about our home grown tomatoes.
Even before I moved here, a friend told me that one of the great things about living here in Southern California was that tomatoes become perenials. We've had tomato plants in pots that really did last a couple of years.

But nothing compares with our crop this year. We have just 2 plants, but this year they're large organic tomatoes planted in our new bed with their roots down in the soil which has been enriched with a year's compost.

We have tried to keep removing most of the extra shoots and I capped all the top shoots before we left for Maine, but being away just 2 weeks they've sprung out all over the place. The plants are way over the top of our garden wall, so the neighbor can enjoy the top shoots now, and whatever tomatoes go over the wall as well I guess.

Except for one that had started getting pink before we left, which we took with us to Maine, the tomatoes just started to become ripe after we got home. So far we've managed with one or two big ones a day, but they're catching up on us!

John keeps singing the song John Denver made popular, with this refrain:

Home grown tomatoes, home grown tomatoes,
What'd life be without home grown tomatoes?
There's only two things that money can't buy:
True love - and home grown tomatoes.

You can hear it here sung by the composer himself, Guy Clarke.

Tonight we had mozarello cheese, basil, black olives and home grown tomatoes for dinner!
Someday soon there will be so many that we'll have an incredibly delicious gazpacho. Mmmm!

"A World That Stands as One"

I haven't written in my blog for a long time. We spent a couple of lovely weeks in Maine that I was going to write about, but then came home to many tasks that needed doing first. Then I was going to write about the incredible tomatoes in our garden (that comes next.)

But then this morning I watched with tears streaming down my face as Barack Obama addressed a wildly enthusiastic crowd in Berlin, a city I have visited many times from soon after the wall went up in 1963 to soon after it was torn down in 1993. John visited Berlin, too, in 2000 before coming to Denmark to ask me to marry him - and then I followed him home to the America that was about to become George Bush's parody of the country I love.

Barack spoke from the Tiergarten, where 40 years ago I fell in love with my first (Danish) husband - the father of my 2 children - in the year of change 1968. Back then the whole area was either vacant, bombed out spaces, or the glorious buildings of the new Germany, including the new Modern Art Museum and the new Philharmonic Hall, with a messy and ugly wall just across the street, dividing a great city.

Another time I came for an EU conference where people from the various countries were invited to get together to discuss our common future. Twice I was there as a Danish German teacher, once on an tour of the city's architectural history, and once on my way to Erfurt in what was then Eastern Germany, along with teachers from around the world. My last visit was in 1996 on a trip with my chorale, with a view of a very different city from the one of my first visit more than 30 years earlier!

Barack envisions a world getting together and tearing down all of those walls we have been building in this world - and he asks us all - Americans, Berliners, world citizens - to join him to accomplish this vision.

Barack Obama has presented a daunting platform for himself, for the United States, and for the world. If you haven't seen his speech, be sure to give yourself time to watch it here.

After supporting first John Edwards and then Hillary Clinton, and then knowing I would support Barack Obama, I think this speech is the turning point, where I have now caught the passion for my support!

Living under seige

The new kitchen
Originally uploaded by bonbayel.

We're sort of thinking about moving to something more environmentally sustainable than here (more about that in another post,) that doesn't have stairs (so we also can stay living there when our knees give out completely) and with more room

But to do that, we have to fix up the condo to remove the bumps and scratches of time, as well as repair larger items, like the light well in the kitchen, which now boasts CFL bulbs and white cabinets, which we understand is what sells these days (they used to be dark wood veneer, which is what the kitchen in the house we're looking at has...)

So everything is draped in plastic, and we've established an interim breakfast and lunch kitchen in the bedroom (sigh!) and we're pretty much living upstairs, except for occasional escapes outside!

I insisted that the painter select water-based paints, although I didn't go as far to pick the really "organic" paints that I would have if we were planning to stay there. The hard part for the painter was the base coat to prime the dark stained cabinets. Dunn & Edwars had the correct paint, since California is outlawing oil-based paints with their nasty VOC content (the part that smells for months after a paint job and gives you a headache) as of July 1, He said the paint store was selling the old stuff at higher prices. I bet there are some who are hoarding, because they don't believe the other's going to work!

At any rate, the smell isn't too bad. John, who grew up in North Carolina, says it reminds him of an old empty "tobacky barn!" No headaches, either, so that is at least pleasant!

Yes We Can

I don't usually write political messages here, but I just watched Hillary's speech for Obama, and was moved to tears that are still dribbling down my face.

This has been a very hard campaign, because Hillary's supporters also want everything that Barack Obama was supporting, just that one little thing more - that finally the glass ceiling would be broken, and the 50% of us who are women could see that we aren't being kept out of the White House.

The Week Magazine's cover shows the White House with a sign "No Girls Allowed," just like your brother's tree house, with one of their typical composite articles Clinton: Why her supporters are so angry, quoting journalists from many sources.

I don't think I am angry. We wanted too much. We wanted somehow that both would win, that neither would lose. We have always wanted an African American to become President as much as we wanted a woman to become President. Trouble is, they can't both be it at the same time, and they are both too strong personalities to share the role with Hillary as VP.

But listen to Hillary's speech. She lists all those things we wanted, and tells us to make sure Obama gets elected so that they can be carried out. And Hillary will be supporting him the whole way, as will I. I am sure that Hillary will have a role in this country's future that goes beyond being the Junior Senator from New York. She will work - with Obama -

• to make sure we all have health care.
  
• to turn around this ridiculous economy that is spending money of weapons that should be used to make sure that all Americans - everyone - has the opportunities to fulfill their dreams.
  
• to work toward a time when all of our energy is sustainable.
  
• to make sure that people all over can afford their food, through sustainable agriculture.
  
• to ensure that people don't have to fear having a home for their families, and a way to get to work, schools and whereever else they want to go.
  
• to work toward bringing our soldiers home, and making sure, as our thanks to them for participating in a war they were tricked into entering, that they have all the support they and their families need for a bright future with both education and health care for both the psychological and physical injuries they bring home with them.

Hillary needs our continued support right now to reduce her campaign debt.

And Obama will need all we can give of time, money and our words until we elect him as President of the United States in November, and the next eight years as well (unless he messes up, when we must always remember to tell him so!) Read here his words of thanks to Hillary:

Obviously, I am thrilled and honored to have Senator Clinton's support. But more than that, I honor her today for the valiant and historic campaign she has run. She shattered barriers on behalf of my daughters and women everywhere, who now know that there are no limits to their dreams. And she inspired millions with her strength, courage and unyielding commitment to the cause of working Americans. Our party and our country are stronger because of the work she has done throughout her life, and I'm a better candidate for having had the privilege of competing with her in this campaign. No one knows better than Senator Clinton how desperately America and the American people need change, and I know she will continue to be in the forefront of that battle this fall and for years to come.

Hillary was competing against a very able candidate, but she has proved that we can break that glass ceiling! As she said in her speech:

There are already 18 million cracks in it!

As with any disappointment, it will take a few days to heal. We knew long ago it would end this way. And all along we said that both candidates were equally able. As a woman I knew early on that it wasn't this time that sexism would be erased in this country. Sexism has probably always existed, and is firmly entrenched in many religions and cultures in this world. Even in Denmark, which has many able women politicians, there are barriers for women (more in business than in politics, from my experience.) I hope my daughter manages to break those glass ceilings!

But we must remember Obama's cry, which has become Hillary's:

Yes we can!