We’ve seen a couple of great documentaries in my climate change class recently: Fighting Goliath and Burning the Future: Coal in America. I’m particularly excited that we’re having Burning the Future’s director in next week. We’re also reading the outstanding Big Coal. So, we’re into coal, in a big way. More about the documentaries and the book before long here.
In the meantime, I just want to report that I’m a little depressed by this recent article on the Presidential contenders, Obama, Clinton woo coal vote in upcoming primaries, by the AP’s hard-working environmental reporter, H. Josef Hebert. I know that these two, and the Republican nominee-in-waiting, John McCain, are heads and shoulders above what we’ve been experiencing in the White House on the subject of climate change. (See Plus ça change, from April 17 below.) Still, I would love for the candidates to say, as John Edwards did, that we have to have a moratorium on new coal-fired power plants until there’s a real CCS technology available.
On mountaintop removal coal mining, a truly evil practice, both Clinton and Obama are trying to have it both ways. I don’t bandy the word “evil” about too much, folks, but this is an environmentally destructive practice without peer in this country at this time, and it’s got devastating human health impacts. See the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition website and get your hands on a DVD of Burning the Future if you don’t believe me.
The AP’s article says this about Obama’s and Clinton‘s take on mountaintop removal mining:
“Clinton drew the ire of some environmentalists when in a public radio interview there she said she was “concerned’ about mountaintop mining but also viewed it as an “economic and environmental trade-off’ that must be “looked at … from a practical perspective.’
Facing a group of environmentalists opposed to mountaintop mining at a meeting in the coal town of Beckley, W.Va., Obama also talked about the balance between economics and environmental protection. “There are environmental consequences to coal extraction,’ said Obama, “just as there are with any energy source.’ That’s just what some of the mine workers in the audience wanted to hear.”
Presumably, the next President’s Environmental Protection Agency will do its job. If it does, mountaintop removal will be a thing of the past.
