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Comments

[Brett]

There is no such thing as clean coal.
The big coal shovel is destroying West Va. with montan top removal.
Clean Coal is a joke being played on the American people.

[tom ferguson]

I looked over your site briefly and I didn't see much information about coal mining. To give clear picture of how coal figures in our quality of life it is important not to leave out the results of coal extraction from the clean coal equation.

[Darryl Hanson]

I'm with you on clean coal, nuclear, AND DRILL NOW!!!!!!!!!!!

[J Spotswood Bowyer]

I encourage your organization to adopt a ZERO carbon footprint. Until you do so you do a disservice to the nation and the public at large. Coal and fossil fuels have been allowed to irresponsibly pollute without recourse or fear of responsibility for same. You can do better and yet choose not to all the while misrepresenting to the public what you TRULY offer and the PUBLIC COST of continuing to utilize your self serving, greed based'services'. If you can not achieve the zero carbon footprint then may your legacy pass into the dustbin of a forgotten past. It is long past time for America to move into the future, one without you!!

[Martin Offenhauer]

No Such Thing as Clean Coal

Here's the reality - Washington Post By Jeff Biggers Sunday, March 2, 2008

".....Here's the hog-killing reality that a coal miner like Burl or my grandfather knew firsthand: No matter how "cap 'n trade" schemes pan out in the distant future for coal-fired plants, strip mining and underground coal mining remain the dirtiest and most destructive ways of making energy.

Coal ain't clean. Coal is deadly.

More than 104,000 miners in America have died in coal mines since 1900. Twice as many have died from black lung disease. Dangerous pollutants, including mercury, filter into our air and water. The injuries and deaths (and air pollution - comment added)) caused by overburdened coal trucks are innumerable. Yet even on the heels of a recent report revealing that in the last six years the Mine Safety and Health Administration decided not to assess fines for more than 4,000 violations, Bush administration officials have called for cutting mine-safety funds by 6.5 percent. Have they already forgotten the coal miners who were entombed underground in Utah last summer?

Above ground, millions of acres across 36 states have been dynamited, torn and churned into bits by strip mining in the last 150 years. More than 60 percent of all coal mined in the United States today, in fact, comes from strip mines.

In the "United States of Coal," Appalachia has become the poster child for strip mining's worst depravations, which come in the form of mountaintop removal. An estimated 750,000 to 1 million acres of hardwood forests, a thousand miles of waterways and more than 470 mountains and their surrounding communities -- an area the size of Delaware -- have been erased from the southeastern mountain range in the last two decades. Thousands of tons of explosives -- the equivalent of several Hiroshima atomic bombs -- are set off in Appalachian communities every year.

How can anyone call this clean?...."

You can't only look at what might come out of the stack, but what it took to make it there, and what happens afterward

Get real, you're only talking about money - and that can't prevent the damage that is being done every day. Remember Acid Rain ? That is real too.

Clean Coal could mean responsible mining without environmental damage, without blowing up mountain tops, without miners dying of black lung disease, or communities and ecosystems being devastated and acid runoff polluting once pristine watersheds.

I'm sure this comment will never appear on your blog - the author certainly will not approve them.

But think about this - what kind of a world are you leaving your grandchildren ? Would you have the courage to face them and tell them you ruined their world for money ?

"Paradise" - written by John Prine -

"And Daddy won't you take me back to Muhlenberg county,
Down by the Green River, where Paradise lay.
"Well I'm sorry, my son, but you're too late in askin'."
"Mr. Peabody's coal train has hauled it away."

We must slow Global Warming or it will destroy us. We can become extinct as well as any other species. "Clean Coal" is not the way.

[Catherine]

Hi there,

I'm in the Coal River Valley in the heart of coal country at the moment. All I've seen for several days are horrific moutaintop removal sites peaking out around every bend. Raw valley fills, poorly reclaimed sites, and lots of industrial scale blasting. I was shook by a huge blast today near the Horse Creek MTR site standing in a friend's yard. Also - talked with a lot of folks who have suffered tremendously from illegal mining practices and environmental crimes. Wow - thousands of environmental violations down here. How do you plan to include dealing with these issues in your Clean Coal campaign? For instance - these folks are living near or below the poverty line - how can you help them get their message out with your $1 million dollar ad campaign?

Can you let us know?

Thanks,
Catherine

[Bob]

As much as I understand coal is an important part of our energy needs and it needs to be part of us weening off oil... let's face it, coal is dirty and more polluting, no matter what you do to make it cleaner burning... and to make it cleaner burning, makes it cost more.

The coal industry, like the oil companies need to be using there profits to invest in clean, renewable energy, otherwise your no better than big oil...

Coal is not the future of this country or planet, nor oil, they both will run out and we should not let it run out... we'll have so many holes in the earth it will collapse... nor is nuclear the answer... do you want the waste in your backyard??

Invest in Hydrogen, Wind & Solar, educate your workers & put them to work in these areas.

If we really focused and invested in these technologies, we could achieve the goal of being fossil fuel free.

I find your coalition extremely misleading and taking the country in the wrong direction. When you can show me that your are investing your profits in renewable energies and focusing on real change, a clean, healthy change, I will then gladly ad my voice to help you.

[Ken]

The only viable answer to coal is nuclear power. Ask yourself, would you rather have mountain top removal and deadly work conditions, the huge carbon foot print generated in the mining, processing and transport of billions of tons of coal a year, the dramatically larger carbon footprint produced in burning it, the particulate pollution, the Mercury, Chromium, Arsenic, Uranium and Thorium released into the environment, and the acid rain, or intact nuclear fuel assemblies in dry storage inside overly engineered casks? Would it help to know that the DOE has been working on technology designed to utilize and burn down the long lived transuranic products created in current light water reactors? Would it help to know that Gen III+ plants produce less than 10% of the mass of waste compared to their 1970's designed predecessors? Would it help to know that we are also developing fuels based on Thorium which produces vastly less long lived waste products and increases operating safety margins and is not a proliferation risk? Look up Westinghouse and MIT's annular fuel design to get an idea about how this field has been advancing in efficiency.

For something on the horizon that is truly exciting watch the ppt on the link below. Reed and Hatch are working on a bill to encourage Thorium utilization and establish standards, if our friends here, the "Clean Coal" dudes don't try to kill it.

http://www.energyfromthorium.com/ppt/GreenEnergyForum_20080725.ppt