Co-authored by Mike Misner.
Several small citizen groups recently went after the children's book publishing giant Scholastic. At issue were books that were distributed to elementary schools in the United States as part of the publisher's paid partnership with the American Coal Foundation.
The groups, Rethinking Schools, the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood and Friends of the Earth, accused Scholastic of producing books that read like brochures from the coal industry.
The coal industry would like that, because the whole coal story is less flattering. Coal is an abundant fuel, burned to generate electricity. But coal's "cheap" price fails to include its costs. When you realize coal's effects on health and our environment, coal is exceptionally costly.
Mountaintop removal -- chopping the tops off mountains and subsequently destroying the surrounding ecosystems -- is one of the main techniques used to expose layers of the black rock.
When burned, coal spews more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than any other fossil fuel. (The misleading term "clean coal" just means coal that emits smaller amounts of carbon dioxide than other kinds of coal. It would better termed "slightly less dirty coal.")
Carbon dioxide both warms the atmosphere and makes the oceans more acidic. Already, this is slowing and distorting the growth of coral reefs and in some places dissolving juvenile shellfish.
Coal-burning power plants also account for over half of all mercury emissions in the US. Eventually, that mercury finds its way into the oceans and makes its way up the food web to the fish we love to eat. The toxin is thus passed on to people. Unfortunately, fetuses and infants are especially vulnerable to mercury, which damages developing nervous systems and stunts brain development.
All these things are the real costs of coal. They're not reflected in the price, but we all pay these costs. If these costs were included in the price of coal, coal would be very expensive. And that matters, because better, cleaner energy technologies would become very competitive. That would be a market that worked, because it would recognize and reflect reality. This is the part of the story that the coal industry conveniently leaves out.
Of course we cannot turn off one fully established industry and turn on another overnight. Many energy experts agree that old, fossil fuel burning sources of energy will have to be around for the transition. So unfortunately coal is here for a while.
This may be why the Obama administration recently had a fire sale in Wyoming for public land thick with coal. Maybe it is also why billionaires like Warren Buffet are betting on coal. Buffett's company owns Burlington Northern, a major coal hauling railroad, and Mid American, one of the largest coal burning utilities in the country.
While billionaires like Buffett are making money on coal, they are also doing good things with philanthropy. In the same ethos, they should spend more money on clean energy in the US.
According to a report by the Pew Charitable Trust, there is money to be made. "If clean energy policies are strengthened significantly in the coming years, the report projects that $2.3 trillion will be invested in clean power assets over the next 10 years, offering companies and countries enormous opportunities."
The whole story is that coal is neither renewable nor clean, and should be thought of as a temporary fuel during a transition away from coal and toward new and existing clean sources of energy.
The final piece of the transition away from coal would be to clean up coal while we still have to live with it. This starts with the dirty twenty five coal-fired power plants that are responsible for nearly a third of all mercury emissions from power production. These plants should drastically reduce their mercury emissions as soon as possible.
The coal industry resists these kinds of clean ups in ways large and small, often raising the specter of jobs and costs. The costs to comply with government standards adds up to about $10 million for the coal burning industry while the potential benefits for people and the planet add up to about $100 million. No contest there.
Even people within in the coal industry admit that technologies that clean the dirty smokestacks are readily available and affordable. And, capturing pollutants emitted by burning coal adds jobs.
Coal's status should be a stepping-stone to technologies that harness the clean renewable energies that naturally power the planet. There is no magic bullet for moving from a fossil fuel economy to a renewable energy economy. But any long term planning that includes burning coal is at best living in the past and at worst shortsighted folly that we cannot afford.
This is the story of jobs and billions in potential investment in American ideas, infrastructure, business, and technology. That's the happy ending to a true coal story we could all live with.
John Stanley and David Loy: A Buddhist Perspective On Ecological Responsibility
http://thinkingaboot.blogspot.com/2011/05/idiot-wind.html
They are still in a crisis. They haven't stopped the release of radioisotopes yet and there is fallout in the United States.
Do we need better backup systems in flood prone areas? Absolutely!
Should the Fukushima complex have been located on MUCH higher ground with redundant, protected battery and diesel backup generators? Obviously!
Do we need to start using Thorium reactors to burn transuranic waste? Yes!
Is nuclear waste safer in Yucca Mountain than in hundreds of scattered storage ponds? No question!
As Germany has discovered, the ONLY viable replacement for base load nuclear power is coal and lest you forget, they are prolific users of wind and solar.
There is an unrecognized hazard that can cause nuclear plants to release massive amounts of radioactivity into surrounding communities.
We are now at a point where all nuclear plants, everywhere, need to be shut down as fast as is humanly possible, beginning with those in Northern latitudes where the surprise is most likely to collapse the power grid for months or years at a time.
http://oncoalriver.com/
If only a small portion of the money thrown away on that now useless bureaucracy was spent on decreasing the cost of solar photovoltaic systems and commercializing fuel cells (Con Ed had a fully operational fuel cell facility in downtown NYC in the 70's) we'd be there now. But the oil and coal companies have bought the politicians who planted their appointees inside to make sure nothing changes.
With globalization, corporations move thier business to the nation-state with the lowest environmental and labor standards as a way of making their product more cost competitive. The problem being that the "race to the bottom" encourages more pollution generation in exchange for economic advatages that are not realized in the cost of a product.
Economists understand this concept. Pollutions of any kind must have a price associated with them, perhaps a market oriented trade value, then we can let free market economics continue its global race to the bottom.
Look at the Chinese people, even they are growing tired of the poor quality of life after they tasted a little money.
Remember, you can;t breathe money, no matter how much you have.
I know that the EPA assigns dollar values to various pollutants based on the health and environmental impacts they have (and uses those values to make cost/benefit decisions with regulation). I would be curious to see exactly how much the total cost (market price plus EPA-assigned cost) is for coal per kW-hr, as well as seeing how that compares for various renewable energy sources (note: renewables aren't free udner such accounting b/c you have to build it and it has a finite life).
For example, if the courts have ruled that a life needlessly ended (for whatever cause) clsts between $1-6 million, then you can estimate mortality associated with pollution levels then assign a dollar value.
Environmental policy is after all, a combination of science, economics and law. Science can fix things, but at a certain cost. Law can remdy things, but also at a cost (to business or other regulated condition). Finally economics can remedy pollution generation if all the metrics are accurately known and costs are applied to each. Then people are free to choose if they want the pollutions (as a consumer or corporate polluter).
Why not talk about the effects and costs without coal? How about the hundreds of thousands that would die due to exposure in the winter. Or how about the 4 to 5 times higher energy costs that would place millions at risk of starvation.
Nice try, but the truth is environmentalists don't care about the human costs of their proposals so factoring them into these equations are false on their face.
. You pay higher prices and I will pay higher prices and we can both help the poor to pay higher prices. I already do pay a chunk of change to the food bank. Smog days are increasing. Children are at risk just so you can lead a life where you don't have to see the damage coal does. This blog didn't cover all the costs of coal. The nuclear disaster in Japan , Chernobyl is another nuclear cost as is Three Mile Island and some you have never heard of. Energy use can be reduced to a very small portion of just by becoming efficient. Is that too high a price to pay so that a child can play outside? Snow is covered with the toxins from coal plants. And so is our water and the fields where our food grows. Life is worthless when you can't breathe air that isn't worse than a smoker who chain smokes.
I'll give you another: Dinosours died for our joules.
Subsidies for post-peak energy industries which are well developed and profiting just fine should be re-allocated to nascent industries.
Solar, wind and bio-fuels need to be developed here soon, or we'll be buying all the new technology from other countries.
Fanned, btw
Thank you for your service and forward thinking.
Oil, Coal, Old nuclear, new nuclear, solar, wind, gas, etc.
Total cost of ownership.
The environmental problems, their risks and their costs - rivers, lakes, streams, oceans, air, forrests, etc.
The medical costs that result - short term and projected into the future.
The costs of military and wars we fight on behalf of the world (because NATO countries have come to rely on us) for certain energy types.
Talking about one source of energy - in this case coal - is not really very useful.
Until a comparative analysis is done for each of the various types of energy - with assumptions included - then any such discussion is one-sided.