Friday, May 23, 2008

The coal industry is spending $35 million or more to try to persuade us that there is such a thing as "clean" coal. Unfortunately, there isn't.

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"Most people know coal isn’t clean, but that hasn’t stopped the coal industry from trying to convince us otherwise."
-- Kevin Grandia of DeSmogBlog, introducing the website Coal is dirty!, a "Clean Coal Body Slam" created in collaboration with Greenpeace USA and the Rainforest Action Network to combat a massive P.R. onslaught from the coal industry

The magic words, it appears, are "carbon capture and sequestration." I don't think you want to know any more about them than I do, but I'm afraid we may be hearing them a lot, unfortunately from people who are trying to sell us bogus or at least wildly exaggerated science indicating that with these new technologies coal can be made clean and safe. It appears that they're prepared to spend tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars to sell their message.

This drives the folks we trust on environmental and energy issues bonkers -- naturally including our go-to webguy A Siegel, who's waxing rapturous today on his Energy Smart blog about the Coal is dirty! site and its star-studded roster of environmental researchers, activists, and journalists. As Siegel says, "Kevin might not have a $35 million budget but he has a team worth millions in terms of quality."

Kevin Grandia explains:
In essence, this site exists to sell the idea that coal is dirty. Pretty easy to do when you consider the facts and clear out the rhetoric. Like the fact that mercury emissions from coal fired-power plants continues to rise and that carbon capture and storage remains an elusive pipe dream that will take another 40 years to deploy on a commercial scale.

Siegel notes that the new site is already going gangbusters, with:

* a section of 10 Coal Hard Facts, starting with "Coal increases rates of disease" ("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 an additional 550,000 asthma attacks result from power power plant pollution")

* Ask Dr. Coal, with "straight talk about coal and your family's health"

* a section of Coal Myths (including "Carbon Capture and Sequestration Is a Myth")

* and a debut "top story," "How Clean Coal Cooks Your Brain," by Jeff Goodell, acontributing editor at Rolling Stone and author of Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, from which Siegel highlights this "critically true point":
In the end, the “clean coal” campaign is about using the tools of the 21st century to keep us locked in the 19th century. Like other greenwashing campaigns, it’s about using the iconography of sexy technology and down-home Americana to maintain the status quo.

The goal is not to solve our problems, but to perpetuate our addiction …

After decades of stoking the engines of denial and obfuscation on global warming, it’s nice that Big Coal wants to be a good citizen. But just because your pusher decides to shower and shave, don’t delude yourself into thinking that he cares about your welfare.
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4 Comments:

At 9:44 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Too bad the picture you show is cooling towers with steam coming off them not smog. Electrostatic precipitation removes close to 99% of the particulate from coal fired power plants. Which is why you probably don't have a picture of a coal fired Power Plant smoke stack with smoke coming out. It is a rare thing to find!

 
At 10:15 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

When they find a way to keep people from dying in cave ins because the mine owner refused to keep up the safety standards, AND 99% of the particulate is removed with Electrostatic precipitation; THEN I'll reconsider.

For now, I'll go with truly clean energy sources - like the sun and the wind. I think we have enough for everyone, and we don't have to treat the people who gather it for us to use as second class vermin in the process.

 
At 10:44 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Which begs the Ultimate Question in these circumstances:

"Would you honesty call yourself a so-called 'American for Balanced Energy Choices' in view of facts suggesting where the very stylee is oxymoronic?"

 
At 9:43 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

There are many sources of energy which we are too lazy to harness. Or someone cannot make enough money off of them.

Energy and water....you own those, you own the world.

 

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