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tagged w/ Coal Kills
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Coal killing the people of West Virginia
The Center for Disease Control estimates that 12,000 coal miners died from black lung between 1992 and 2002.
Coal plants are the largest source of human-generated mercury pollution in the US.
For more check out: http://www.coal-is-dirty.com
A special thanks to: http://www.burningthefuture.com/
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How can we as Americans sit and watch this happen in our country when there are viable alternate energies to bring jobs to Appalachia and health to its citizens with cleaner water and air? The Center for Disease Control estimates that 12,000 coal miners died from black lung... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 years ago
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- 27 comments
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Tax-free financing for coal power plants under attack
Environmental activists and others are opening a new frontier in their fight against coal-fired power plants by questioning the use of tax-exempt bonds to help fund such projects.
New York City Comptroller William Thompson earlier this month called on the U.S. Treasury Department to investigate tax-free bond use in financing the plants. He cited the potential for expensive regulatory changes aimed at curbing greenhouse gases, the escalating cost of coal and subsequent risks to investors and taxpayers.
The Sierra Club also has been warning about the use of tax-exempt financing for coal plants owned by public or private entities, according to Becki Clayborn, a regional representative for the group.
"To us, it's a huge risk on taxpayers that doesn't need to be there," she said.
Last fall, the Sierra Club sent letters to municipal members of American Municipal Power-Ohio about financial risks attached to the nonprofit power wholesaler's involvement in the Prairie State coal-fired plant Peabody Energy Corp is building in southern Illinois.
"This massive power plant, which has not yet been built, would not only be a large source of water pollution, air pollution and global warming emissions, but will likely put your municipality at financial risk," the letter said. It pointed to escalating cost estimates for the project and legislation in the U.S. Congress that if passed, could raise the cost of power produced by the plant.
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Gee, why don't all those squawking about a carbon tax that would be revenue neutral complain about higher utility bills because of stunts like this? You are already being taxed by big coal.
Environmental activists and others are opening a new frontier in their fight against... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 years ago
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Blasting the Appalachian Economy
The Apppalachian people, along with our oldest mountains, are paying the full price for coal. Coal companies are really good at making promises.
The families and communities of Appalachia have, in fact, been the beneficiary of coal company promises for 150 years, with a lasting peace and prosperity always “just over this next dune,” or in the case of Appalachia…just under our next mountain.
Over the last 30 years in Appalachian coal country we have seen more than 1 million acres of some of the most bio-diverse forest in the world destroyed, more than 1200 miles of vital American headwater streams buried and polluted by mountaintop removal mining waste, and over 474 mountains blasted to rubble by mountaintop removal coal mining (check out Appalachian Mountaintop Removal in Google Earth ).
All the while, coal companies have promised up that while there may be some environmental trade-off to mountaintop removal mining – it was SURE to bring great jobs and prosperity to the region. But while many corporate zillionaires from outside the region have profited mightily off of our resources, the Appalachian people have learned that mountaintop removal does the same thing to our economy that it does to our beloved mountains.
In 1995, Harvard economists Jeffery Sachs and Andrew Warner discovered a clear negative relationship between natural resource-base exports, including agriculture, minerals, and fuels, and GDP growth.
They dubbed this phenomenon "The Resource Curse."
Of the 95 countries they investigated, only two achieved a 2% annual GDP growth rate between 1970-1989. A more common occurrence was increased poverty, warfare, and civil strife.
Electric power generation pulled in more than $380 billion in 2005. More than half of that electricity generation came from coal.
If we’ve been mining coal for 150 years...why are the people of Appalachia among the poorest in the country?
The Apppalachian people, along with our oldest mountains, are paying the full price... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 years ago
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- 9 comments
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EPA proposes allowing coal plants to be built near national parks
Critics fear the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will adopt a rule in the waning days of the Bush administration that will make it easier to build coal-fired power plants near national parks.
The proposed change, pending since last June, comes as the utility industry moves into its biggest building boom in coal-fueled power plants in decades. To meet growing electricity needs, more than 20 plants are under construction in 14 states and more than 100 are in various stages of planning.
Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, vowed in an interview with The Associated Press to push Congress to overrule the EPA if it enacts the rule, perhaps as early as this summer.
The new rule would change the way states, the EPA and others calculate the impact of a new pollution source, like a coal plant, on a park's maximum pollution load, said John Bunyak of the National Park Service's Air Resources Division in Denver. Instead of weighing peak periods of pollution, the new rule would use annual averages.
Don Barger, southern regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, compared it to a person sticking one hand in a block of ice and the other in a fire.
"Your average temperature is just fine, but your hands are not," he said. "You are getting some real impact there."
As an example, he said air quality in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the country's most-visited national park with more than 9 million visitors a year, recently reached an "orange alert" pollution warning. The park straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina border.
When that happens, "the park is getting hammered. People in the park are getting hammered. Plants in the park are getting hammered," Barger said. "It doesn't matter where it averages out some other time. You have a family from Ohio on vacation. It is the only time they are going to be there. What views can they see? What air are they breathing?"
EPA spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn said the rule is part of an EPA program to prevent air quality degradation in national parks and would not change the level of emissions allowed in clean-air areas.
But in a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, Alexander writes that the National Park Service and the EPA's own regional air quality experts have determined the proposal would result in undercounting of actual pollution sources.
Alexander wrote that the National Park Service says the rule "provides the lowest possible degree of protection" for 156 so-called Class 1 areas that include the country's most revered national parks and preserves, from Acadia in Maine to Yellowstone in Wyoming.
Critics fear the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will adopt a rule in the waning... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 years ago
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- 29 comments
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The Coal Hard Facts
#1: Coal Increases Rates of Disease
The United States burns more than a billion tons of coal each year – that’s 20 pounds of coal for every person in the country, every day.
According to the American Lung Association, 24,000 people a year die prematurely because of pollution from coal-fired power plants. And every year 38,000 heart attacks, 12,000 hospital admissions and anadditional 550,000 asthma attacks result from power plant pollution.
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#2: Coal Kills Jobs
Despite coal industry claims that coal mining creates lots of jobs, the truth is that coal mining employment has been declining for decades, due to increased use of machinery instead of manpower.
In West Virginia alone, coal mining employment has plummeted from 126,000 miners in 1948 (who produced 168 million tons of coal), to just 15,000 miners employed in 2005 (who, with the help of machinery, produced 128 million tons of coal).
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#3: Burning Coal Emits Mercury
Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of human-generated mercury pollution in the U.S. Mercury emissions from electrical generation continues to rise.
Mercury in mothers' blood and breast milk can interfere with the development of babies' brains and neurological systems and can lead to learning disabilities, attention deficit disorder, problems with coordination, lowered IQ and even mental retardation.
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#4: Burning Coal is Fuel for Global Warming
The U.S. produces about 25 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions from burning fossil fuels.
Burning coal contributes 40 percent of U.S. CO2 emissions. Coal is the most carbon intensive fossil fuel. According to the United Nations Environment Program, coal emits around 1.7 times as much carbon per unit of energy when burned as does natural gas and 1.25 times as much as oil.
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#5: Coal Kills Miners
The Center for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that 12,000 coal miners died from black lung disease between 1992 and 2002.
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#6: Coal Wastes Huge Quantities of Water
Coal mining requires an estimated 70 to 260 million gallons of water every day.
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Continued at the link where you can find out how to stand up to 'clean coal' in your community and online.#1: Coal Increases Rates of Disease The United States burns more than a billion tons... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 years ago
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- 3 comments
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China's Shoreline Waters Seriously Polluted
Vast stretches of China's coastal waters are seriously polluted, and the country's coastal wetlands and mangrove forests are vanishing, Xinhua news agency reported on Sunday, citing a marine specialist.
Luan Weixin, a professor at the Economics and Management College at Dalian Maritime University, said 50 percent of inland coastal wetlands had disappeared because of excessive reclamation and 80 percent of coral reefs and mangrove forests had been destroyed over the past 50 years.
Severely affected areas included waters near East Liaoning, Bohai and Hangzhou bays, and the estuaries of the Yellow, Yangtze and Zhujiang rivers, as well as inshore areas of major coastal cities, he told a conference in the northern coastal city of Tianjin.
"Over the past 20 years or so, China's marine economy has been developing at a staggeringly rapid pace and marine resources are being widely tapped. As a result, the condition of China's inshore environment is deteriorating and the ocean ecology has been seriously damaged," Luan said.
He was referring to the economic boom along coastal areas, including fishing but also land reclamation for development and construction of hotels and ports.
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Economic prosperity at what price?
Vast stretches of China's coastal waters are seriously polluted, and the... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 years ago
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Mounting costs slow the push for clean coal
For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They want to take the carbon dioxide that spews from coal-burning power plants and pump it back into the ground.
President George W. Bush is for it, and indeed has spent years talking up the virtues of "clean coal." All three candidates to succeed him favor the approach. So do many other members of Congress. Coal companies are for it. Many environmentalists favor it. Utility executives are practically begging for the technology.
But it has become clear in recent months that the nation's effort to develop the technique is lagging badly.
In January, the government canceled its support for what was supposed to be a showcase project, a plant at a carefully chosen site in Illinois where there was coal, access to the power grid, and soil underfoot that backers said could hold the carbon dioxide for eons.
Perhaps worse, in the last few months, utility projects in Florida, West Virginia, Ohio, Minnesota and Washington State that would have made it easier to capture carbon dioxide have all been canceled or thrown into regulatory limbo.
Coal is abundant and cheap, assuring that it will continue to be used. But the failure to start building, testing, tweaking and perfecting carbon capture and storage means that developing the technology may come too late to make coal compatible with limiting global warming.
"It's a total mess," said Daniel Kammen, director of the Renewable and Appropriate Energy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley.
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Plans to combat global warming generally assume that continued use of coal for power plants is unavoidable for at least several decades. Therefore, starting as early as 2020, forecasters assume that carbon dioxide emitted by new power plants will have to be captured and stored underground, to cut down on the amount of global-warming gases in the atmosphere.
Yet, simple as the idea may sound, considerable research is still needed to be certain the technique would be safe, effective and affordable.
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This is exactly why I have criticized and will continue to criticize the presidential candidates. They are lying to the American people about this. All of them have given campaign stump speeches intimating that this technology is already perfected and only a couple of years away.They use this lie to validate the fact thar they will allow coal companies to continue to spew their toxic and climate change causing garbage into our atmosphere for the next twenty years without real penalty under the guise of a "cap and trade" system that I am almost certain will be manipulated to benefit them.
We don't need carbon sequestration, and i personally believe it would be detrimental to underground water systems and acquifers. What we need is AGGRESSIVE action regarding bringing solar, wind, and other alternate energies to market.
I feel as though I type this over and over and over again, and still see nothing happening. We have deserts in this country that could hold enough solar arrays on them to power the homes of hundreds of thousands of people, and here they sit in Congress and on the campaign trail talking about "clean coal."
Like nuclear plants and desalination plants, carbon sequestration is a risky expensive bandaid to allow busniness as usual with the illusion of moral courage. That is all. I will not believe this Congress is serious about tackling climate change until they stand up to these toxic industries to wean us OFF of them and give the people what they want and what this planet must have in order to adequately sustain us and our children: CLEAN, affordable, SAFE alternate energies.For years, scientists have had a straightforward idea for taming global warming. They... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 years ago
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How Clean Coal Cooks Your Brain
"Clean coal" is not an actual invention, a physical thing – it is an advertising slogan. Like "fat-free donuts" or "interest-free loans."
Several years ago, in Gillette, Wyoming, I fell into a long conversation with the vice-president of a large American coal company about coal's public image problem. Gillette is in the center of the Powder River Basin, the epicenter of the coal boom in America, where 60 foot seams of coal sit just below the surface.
This vice president, who did not want his name to appear in print, was deeply concerned about coal's future and expressed frustration with environmental attacks on coal, suggesting that it was all a problem of perception: "People don't like coal because it's black," he told me.
"If it were white, all our problems would be solved."
Whenever one of those slick ads for "clean coal" pops up on CNN, I think about that conversation in Gillette. The $35 million "clean coal" campaign, spearheaded by a coal industry front group called American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (formerly known as Americans for Balanced Energy Choices),is nothing less than a nationwide effort to paint coal white.
And to the coal industry's credit, they're doing a pretty good job. "Clean coal" is touted by Republicans and Democrats alike as the solution to America's energy troubles.
The logic is simple: America has lots of coal. We are a technologically advanced society. Ergo, we can clean up coal. What's the problem?
Well, here's one: "clean coal" is not an actual invention, a physical thing – it is an advertising slogan. Like "fat-free donuts" or "interest-free loans," "clean coal" is a phrase that embodies the Bush-era faith that there is an easy answer for every hard question in America today. We can have a war in Iraq without sacrifice. We can borrow more than we can afford without worrying about how we'll pay it back. We can end our dependency on oil by powering our SUVs with ethanol made from corn. And we can keep the lights on without superheating the climate through the magic of "clean coal."
Here's another: mining and burning coal remains one of the most destructive things human beings do on this earth. It destroys mountains, poisons water, pollutes the air, and warms the atmosphere. True, if you look at it strictly from the point of view smog-producing chemicals like sulfur dioxide, new coal plants are cleaner than the old coal burners of yore. But going from four bottles of whiskey a week down to three does not make you clean and sober. we breathe
Of course, the "clean coal" campaign is not about reality – it's about perception. It's an exercise in re-branding. Madison Ave. did it for Harley Davidson motorcycles and Converse shoes. Why not Old King Coal?
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Time to stand up to King Coal for our future. Time for presidential candidates to start telling the truth about it.
"Clean coal" is not an actual invention, a physical thing – it is an... more-
- JanforGore
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Six Ways Coal Destroys Mountains
1. CLEARING
Before mining can begin, all topsoil and vegetation must be removed. Because coal companies frequently are responding to short-term fluctuations in the price of coal, these trees are often not even used comercially in the rush to get the coal, but instead are burned or sometimes illegally dumped into valley fills.
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2. BLASTING
Many Appalachian coal seams lie deep below the surface of the mountains. Accessing these seams through surface mining can require the removal of 500-800 feet or more of elevation. Blowing up this much mountain is accomplished by using millions of pounds of explosives.
Click here for a photo.
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3. DIGGING
Coal and debris is removed by using this piece of machinery, called a dragline. A dragline stands 22 stories high and can hold 24 compact cars in its bucket. These machines can cost up to $100 million, but are favored by coal companies because they displace the need for hundreds of jobs.
Click here for a photo.
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4. DUMPING WASTE
The waste from the mining operation, also known as overburden or spoil, is dumped into nearby valleys, burying streams. According to an EPA environmental impact statement, more than 1,000 miles of Appalachian streams were permitted to be buried as of 2001.
Click here for a photo.
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5. PROCESSING
The coal is washed and treated before it is loaded on trains. The excess water left over from this process is called coal slurry or sludge and is stored in open coal impoundments. Coal sludge is a mix of water, coal dust, clay and toxic chemicals such as arsenic mercury, lead, copper, and chromium. Impoundments are held in place by mining debris, making them very unstable.
Click here for a photo.
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6. RECLAMATION
While reclamation efforts such as stabilization and revegetation are required for mountaintop removal sites, in practice, state agencies that regulate mining are generous with granting waivers to coal companies.
Most sites receive little more than a spraying of exotic grass seed, but even the best reclamation provides no comfort to nearby families and communities whose drinking water supplies have been polluted and whose homes will be threatened by floods for the hundred or thousands of years it will require to re-grow a forest on the mined site.
Click here for a photo.
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Coal is a dirty, destructive, antiquated form of energy. It blackens our skies, pollutes our water, and sickens our people. We must wean ourselves from it to save ourselves and look to solar, wind, and other alternate energies to provide our energy needs for the future. What coal companies do to get coal is immoral and their ad campaigns are the height of deception and propaganda. I'm ready to stand up to them. Are you? We must because we are running out of time to do what we must do to keep us at 350ppm. 1. CLEARING Before mining can begin, all topsoil and vegetation must be removed.... more-
- JanforGore
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- 3 years ago
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Obama, Clinton don't dare challenge King Coal's unspeakable environmental violence
It's the one environmental crime that no US politician will confront – the destruction of Kentucky's mountains. Leonard Doyle visits the Appalachian peaks being blasted by Big Coal.
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The road slicing through the thickly forested hills of eastern Kentucky used to be called the Daniel Boone Parkway. It was named for the controversial American folk hero who fought his way across Indian country to settle a state where many of his descendants still live.
That was before the coal industry began blowing up the Appalachian Mountains as a cheap way of getting at the black stuff below, behaviour decried by the environmental group Appalachian Voices as "one of the greatest human rights and environmental tragedies in America's recent history".
Daniel Boone's road is now the Hal Rogers Parkway, named after one of the Kentucky coal industry's closest friends in Washington, a Republican Congressman of 34 years. It passes through a mountain range older than the Himalayas and is blanketed in broadleaf forests rivalled only by the Amazon basin in its biodiversity.
But the canopy of trees which lines the parkway as it rises from the bluegrass horse country to the mountains is a trompe l'oeil. The lush forest gives way to scraggly trees along the ridge-line, and behind those trees is evidence of unspeakable ecological violence. In a process known as mountaintop removal an upland moonscape is being created, which is incapable of regenerating trees. As far as the eye can see, the land is grey and pockmarked with huge black lakes, filled with toxic coal slurry.
This has come about because of America's insatiable appetite for cheap coal to generate electricity, a process enthusiastically backed by the Bush administration as it tries to displace the consumption of imported oil. And the Democrats are little better. They control Kentucky and neither Barack Obama nor Hillary Clinton have dared to challenge "King Coal" while campaigning.
The devastation being wrought on Appalachia is best appreciated from the air. An organisation called Southwinds offers people an eagle-eye view of the carnage, not readily appreciated from the road. Another way to see what's going on behind the ridge-line is to take a Google Earth virtual tour of an online memorial to the 470 mountains blown up and levelled in recent years.
It's the one environmental crime that no US politician will confront – the... more-
- JanforGore
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Coal plant pollution threatens US parks: report
US regulators are proposing to weaken air quality laws, which would allow new coal-fired power plants to pollute US parks from Shenandoah in Virginia to the Great Basin in Nevada, a new report said on Thursday.
Amid rising power demand and flat US natural gas output, electricity generators are seeking to build power plants fired by abundant coal.
The fuel is cheap compared with other fossil fuels, but emits more pollutants, such as mercury and smog components sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides, as well as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide.
"President George Bush's administration is responding to this growing threat to our national parks by seeking to weaken and rewrite the laws that protect national park air quality," Mark Wexler, the clean air director for the National Parks Conservation Association, a Washington-based advocacy group, said by telephone.
The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed refinements in so-called New Source Review rules that would change the way air pollution is calculated, allowing manipulation by industries seeking pollution permits, the NPCA said.
The changes would enable electricity generators, for example, to hide pollution spikes on hot days when their units typically run hardest.
Complaints that the revisions would harm park air quality have been underscored by US Rep. Henry Waxman, a California Democrat, who wrote to the EPA this year urging Administrator Stephen Johnson to abandon the proposed rule change.
The EPA did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the report. In the past, it has said that the rules would provide greater regulatory certainty.
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National Parks Conservation Association Report: Dark Horizons
http://www.npca.org/darkhorizons/
We then have no moral highground to take in chiding China or any other country about coal when we can't even get our own act together. 110 new plants proposed with a climate bill due to be debated in the Senate next month that actually allows for them to keep polluting. Where are we going with this?
US regulators are proposing to weaken air quality laws, which would allow new... more-
- JanforGore
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- 4 years ago
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Celebrate clean coal, come on!
In one TV commercial, Kool and the Gang warble their celebration of good times because coal, yes, coal, makes the party possible in America. In another, white and black, young and old, male and female, and even someone in a doctor's green scrubs, stare into the camera and soulfully declare: "I believe" American know-how will make coal clean and stop it from contributing to climate change. Not sold? Maybe you missed the newspaper ads and billboards warning that turning away from coal could mean blackouts, unemployment and higher electric bills.
These messages and other variations on the coal-is-great theme are flooding the nation courtesy of the coal industry, coal-fueled utilities, railroads and related industries. The pro-coal marketing campaign -- known by its tag line "Clean Coal" -- has kicked into high gear as prospects for new plants have turned bleak. Wall Street is tightening financing, leading to what one analyst told the Christian Science Monitor is a "de facto moratorium on coal power." The expected election of a more environmentally friendly president may lead to the first federal limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Even red states like Kansas are now battling the construction of coal-fired plants. Last year, 59 new plants were either canceled or halted across the nation.
When it comes to the threat of global warming, "the coal industry are the last people to get it," says Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit, progressive think tank. "That's why they're fighting so hard. They're on a death spiral right now."
The coal industry's woes have risen as worries over climate change have increased. Today's coal-fired plants emit copious amounts of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. One new plant planned for Iowa, for example, would dump 5.9 million tons of the stuff into the air in just one year. Two proposed Kansas plants would add 11 million tons annually.
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As the coal debate continues, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced April 23 that global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide increased by 19 billion tons in the last year. The worldwide concentration is now 385 parts per million. The level that is expected to tip the world into disaster is 450 parts per million.
But climate change isn't raining on the coal industry's campaign. In April, Barack Obama acknowledged a voter sporting one of the industry's hats at a campaign stop in Dunmore, Penn., and then used the industry's own terminology to talk about his support for investing in carbon storage research. In an appearance in Charleston, W.Va., Hillary Clinton also used the industry's own words to pledge her support for doing the same.
Obama, Clinton and John McCain all favor legislation to fight climate change. The nearly identical programs proposed by the two Democrats are more far-reaching than that put forth by McCain. However, none of them support a moratorium on building new coal-fired plants.
Meanwhile, the Clean Coal marketing machine keeps rolling. As one commercial declares, coal powers "our way of life." On the soundtrack, Kool and the Gang sing, "Celebrate good times, come on!"
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What an insidious campaign. And all the presidential candidates go along with it! It is time to tell them to stop this pandering to those industries who care about nothing but their own balance sheets. CO2 levels are now the highest they have been in 650,000 years and it is because of the very garbage being spewed by coal plants.
"Clean coal" is an assault on reason! Shame on Obama, Clinton, and McCain for giving it credence to get votes while people die from its effects.
In one TV commercial, Kool and the Gang warble their celebration of good times because... more-
- JanforGore
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- 4 years ago
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Clinton, Obama talk up clean coal
US Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are talking more about "clean coal" and less about global warming as they woo voters in West Virginia and Kentucky - two states that sit at the heart of the nation's coal economy.
In a bid to draw voters ahead of Democratic primaries in West Virginia tomorrow and Kentucky on May 20, both candidates are playing up the ascendant role of commercially untested and so far economically nonviable ways of converting America's plentiful coal supplies into electricity without spewing massive quantities of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
"We need some big investments right now in figuring out how to capture and store carbon dioxide from coal," Senator Clinton told a rally in the rural town of Clear Fork.
To get there, she took a windy road through the Appalachian Mountains that passed at least four big coal mines cut into the mountainside.
Not to be outdone, Senator Obama's campaign has distributed flyers in Kentucky stating that "Barack Obama believes in clean Kentucky coal." The flyers show a picture of giant barges carrying coal down the Ohio River.
Coal-fired power plants generate about half of US electricity supplies, and account for about 40 per cent of US greenhouse gas emissions - the biggest single industrial source.
US Democratic presidential hopefuls Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are talking more... more-
- JanforGore
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Sierra Club threatens suits over coal power plants
Sierra Club sent letters on Tuesday threatening to file suit to stop construction of eight coal-fired power plants in six states because, the environmental group claims, they violate the Clean Air Act.
"This is the first major ramification on the ground from the (Washington) D.C. circuit kicking out the Bush administration's rules in February," said Bruce Nilles, director of the Sierra Club's effort to stop coal power plants.
In February, a federal appeals court in Washington ruled that the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency violated the Clean Air Act in not setting mandatory cuts for mercury emissions of power plants.
The suits would be filed in the federal districts where the proposed power plants would be located, Nilles said. The suits would seek to require the plants to go back to state permitting agencies for new permits that meet the tougher emission standards, Nilles said.
Coal-fired power plants are the largest source of mercury emissions in the United States as well as 40 percent of U.S. carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. CO2 is the by far the largest contributor to greenhouse gases that cause global warming.
Coal-fired power plants also are seen by most national politicians as essential because they make half the electricity used in the United States.
The Sierra Club said there are alternatives to coal power plants and that until capturing and sequestering carbon dioxide emissions is proven feasible and affordable, no more coal plants should be built.
Nilles said the Sierra Club has helped stop 63 of the 150 coal-fired power plants that were in the planning stages since 2002, including 31 last year.
Sierra Club sent letters on Tuesday threatening to file suit to stop construction of... more-
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Burning The Future: Coal In America
A trailer of the upcoming film, Burning the Future. The film takes a hard look at the environmental and human effects of strip mining coal in the US.A trailer of the upcoming film, Burning the Future. The film takes a hard look at the... more-
- JanforGore
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Don't be deceived, there's no such thing as 'clean coal'
Let's be real: "Clean coal" is a marketing slogan not a technological reality. Coal does currently provide us with a reliable source of electricity but at an astronomical price that is hidden from us consumers.
Maybe you pay for it with your child's asthma. Maybe you paid for it with your father's heart attack or your grandmother's stroke that took her speech away. Maybe you lost a baby to SIDS on a particularly bad air day.
Emissions from coal-fired power plants are a leading cause of smog, acid rain, global warming, air toxins - and premature deaths. The EPA estimates that over 30,000 Americans are dying prematurely each year due to emissions from power plants, the majority of which are coal-powered.
This doesn't even address the high mortality rates associated with the mining process.
Thus, coal kills more people annually than homicides (16,000 in 2000) or AIDS (14,000) and nearly as many as traffic accidents (42,000). So when coal industry advocates like Joe Lucas, vice president of communications for the American Coalition for Clean Coal, and Bountiful resident Bruce Taylor, co-owner of the proposed coal plant in Sevier County, say "cleaner coal," what exactly do they mean?
According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, a typical coal plant annually generates:
* 3.7 million tons of carbon dioxide (CO2),
the primary human cause of global warming,
* 10,000 tons of sulfur dioxide (SO2),
* 500 tons of small airborne particles, which can cause chronic bronchitis, aggravated asthma, and premature death,
* 10,200 tons of nitrogen oxide (NOx), equal to what would be emitted by half a million late-model cars. NOx leads to formation of ozone (smog) which inflames the lungs,
* 720 tons of carbon monoxide (CO), which causes headaches and places additional stress on people with heart disease,
* 220 tons of hydrocarbons, volatile organic compounds (VOC), which form ozone,
* 170 pounds of mercury, an extremely potent neurotoxin; just 1/70th of a teaspoon deposited on a 25-acre lake can make the fish unsafe for human consumption. The Great Salt Lake is already heavily contaminated with mercury.
* 225 pounds of arsenic, which will cause cancer in one out of 100 people who regularly drink water containing 50 parts per billion,
* 114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, other toxic heavy metals, and trace amounts of uranium.
None of these numbers sounds "clean" to me. So, does coal advocate Lucas consider a "clean" coal plant to produce only 7,000 pounds of annual sulfur dioxide emissions instead of 10,000 pounds? Does he consider 2 million tons of carbon dioxide instead of 3.7 million tons to be "clean" or how about 120 pounds of mercury instead of 170 pounds? Does "clean" coal only cause 20,000 premature deaths annually as compared to 30,000?
The reality is coal is dirty and will likely remain so.
Let's be real: "Clean coal" is a marketing slogan not a technological... more-
- JanforGore
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- 4 years ago
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Obama and Clinton pushing coal to get votes!
In states like Pennsylvania, where voters will cast ballots this Tuesday, and in West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Montana — upcoming primary states — coal sways voters.
While increased mechanization has produced a dramatic decline in coal industry employment, the numbers remain substantial. There are 47,000 coal workers in Pennsylvania and West Virginia and 21,000 in Kentucky, according to the National Mining Association. The three states are the country's biggest coal producers after Wyoming.
Both Obama and Clinton have rallied environmentalists with their promises to develop windmills, solar power and other renewable energy sources and order mandatory reductions in greenhouse gases from power plants to counter global warming.
It's an energy policy that would seem to target coal, which produces half the country's electricity but also nearly 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide, the leading greenhouse gas, each year.
Instead, "clean coal" has become the mantra of both candidates. Some environmentalists are not too happy with that.
"They keep using the term 'clean coal.' That's really an oxymoron," snaps Brent Blackwelder, president of the environmental group Friends of the Earth. "They absolutely are pandering the coal industry's propaganda that clean coal is the hope of the future. There's no such animal as clean coal."
Not all environmentalists are as critical, acknowledging that coal will remain an integral part of the country's energy picture. The two Democratic presidential aspirants' support for coal is outweighed by their strong push for renewable fuels and — unlike President Bush — their call for mandatory, economy-wide action on climate change.
"How they finesse things on the margin is up to them," said Cathy Duvall, the Sierra Club's national political director, as long as they also "talk about moving away from conventional coal ... and putting money into and investing in a renewable energy economy that will provide jobs."
Obama, by representing Illinois, a top 10 coal producing state, has a little more experience at it than Clinton. Fifteen months ago, he joined Republican coal-state Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky in calling for loan guarantees and tax breaks for coal-to-liquid processing plants.
Environmentalists protested and he modified his proposal to include a requirement that such plants have carbon-capture technology and produce 20 percent less greenhouse gases than conventional diesel fuel refineries.
In reality, there is little difference in the broad energy agendas of Obama and Clinton.
In states like Pennsylvania, where voters will cast ballots this Tuesday, and in West... more-
- JanforGore
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China's Grime Belt: Air Pollution Extreme: BBC
China's air is beyond danger levels.This is progress?-
- JanforGore
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China coal demand unfazed despite winter storms
by Siobhan Devine
Washington, March 5, 2007
When snowstorms blanketed large swaths of China this winter they aggravated transportation bottlenecks and already-depleted coal reserves, provoking local power cuts and highlighting the vulnerability of China's reliance on coal. But despite such challenges and coal's damaging environmental side-effects, demand is unlikely to wane soon.
"The government is very aware of relying too heavily on coal, because it contributes to the energy security issue and the environmental issue," said Yingling Liu, China program manager at the Worldwatch Institute. Nevertheless, she predicts coal demand will increase in the near and medium term.
"Urban demand has driven the expansion of the heavy industry sector, and this trend will continue in the next two decades. This means that demand for energy, and coal specifically, will increase," she said.
Chinese demand for coal has registered 12 percent annual growth since 2001, and coal makes up almost 70 percent of China's energy consumption, according to a joint report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies and the Peterson Institute for International Economics. According to a separate CSIS report released in October, demand is expected to triple by 2025, particularly due to growth in the nation's electricity sector. And coal demand in China's non-electricity, primarily industrial, sectors is expected to more than double by 2030, according to the Energy Information Agency.
Coal's widespread popularity in China derives from its abundance there. China is the world's top coal producer, providing 40 percent of global supply in 2006, according to BP. Such production is sustained by the world's third-largest share of proved reserves (13 percent of the total), and a healthy reserves-to-production ratio of 48 years.
As such, coal in China is relatively "cheap and stable, so it meets the demand for a reliable and affordable energy supply," said Liu.
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Based on this, how can we expect China to sign any global treaty when their rapacious and continuing use of coal would only negate any promises they make? by Siobhan Devine Washington, March 5, 2007 When snowstorms blanketed large swaths... more-
- JanforGore
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- 4 years ago
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I'm killing people and decapitating mountains
Horrific! This site lets you plug in your zip code and then tells you where your electricity comes from. I watched a doc about the devastating affects of mountain top removal in West Virginia awhile back, and walked away feeling scott free that I wasn't "taking part in the that particular land massacre". But I just found out that my energy (I live in Berkeley, CA) actually comes from West Virgina, and is stealing the lives of small children. great. (sure do hope that website isn't lying to me.....)Horrific! This site lets you plug in your zip code and then tells you where your... more-
- leahl
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- 4 years ago
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