Coal's True Cost

Last evening's GOP CNN/YouTube debate and the Democratic presidential debate on November 15 were jointly sponsored by a coal industry coalition comprised of mining, railroad and utility interests.

Their high profile civic involvement is designed to further confuse American voters about coal's true cost to our society. Many of the Republican candidates have endorsed massive new subsidies for King Coal and dutifully parrot industry talking points including earnest promises of cheap "clean coal." Given that climate change is the most urgent threat to our collective survival, it is shocking that no debate moderator has pressed the candidates to clearly state their positions on "clean coal."

In fact, there is no such thing as "clean coal." And coal is only "cheap" if one ignores its calamitous externalized costs. In addition to global warming, these include dead forests and sterilized lakes from acid rain, poisoned fisheries in 49 states and children with damaged brains and crippled health from mercury emissions, millions of asthma attacks and lost work days and thousands dead annually from ozone and particulates. Coal's most catastrophic and permanent impacts are from mountaintop removal mining. If the American people could see what I have seen from the air and ground during my many trips to the coalfields of Kentucky and West Virginia: leveled mountains, devastated communities, wrecked economies and ruined lives, there would be a revolution in this country.

Well now you can visit coal country without ever having to leave your home. Every presidential candidate and every American ought to take a few seconds to visit an ingenious new website created by Appalachian Voices, that allows one to tour the obliterated landscapes of Appalachia. And it's not just Arch Coal, Massey Coal and their corporate toadies in electoral politics who are culpable for the disaster. The amazing new website allows you to enter your zip code to learn how you're personally connected to the great crime of mountaintop removal. Using this website Americans from Maine to California can see these mountains and the communities that were sacrificed to power their home. The tool uses Google Maps and Google Earth as interfaces to a large database of power plants and mountaintop removal coal mines. A November 15, 2007 article in the Wall Street Journal highlighted the site as one of the most innovative, cutting-edge uses of these powerful tools. The site puts a human face on the issue by highlighting the stories of families living in the shadows of these mines.

Each day the coal barons from companies like Massey and Arch detonate 2500 tons of explosives-the power of a Hiroshima bomb every week-to blow away Appalachian mountain tops to reach the coal seams beneath. Colossal machines then plow the rock and debris into the adjacent river valleys and hollows, destroying forests and burying free-flowing mountain streams, flattening North America's most ancient mountain range. According to EPA 1,200 miles of American rivers and streams have already been permanently interred and 470 of Appalachia's largest mountains have simply disappeared, leaving behind giant pits and barren moonscapes, some as large as Manhattan Island. I recently flew over one 18 square-mile pit - Hobet 21 - which you can now tour on Google Earth!

We are literally cutting down the historic landscapes where Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett roamed and that are so much the source of American's values, character and culture.

Mountaintop mining poisons water supplies, pollutes the air and destroys hundreds of miles of North America's most ancient and biologically diverse hardwood forests and permanently impoverishes local communities. Millions of dollars earned from this criminal enterprise land in the coffers of the politicians now jockeying to lead our country to a "new energy future." Mountaintop removal is one of the biggest environmental holocausts in human history. Wherever you live, you have a connection-and a responsibility.

The effort to end mountaintop removal has been gaining steam over the past year. As of today, the leading Congressional plan to ban the practice has 118 co-sponsors-dozens more than last year, with over a year to go in the 110th Congress.

From Appalachia to the Western states of Wyoming and Utah, the strip miners have permanently destroyed some of the most beautiful country on Earth, leaving behind a legacy of misery and poverty. For too long Arch, Massey and their tame politicians have hidden their crimes in the remote poverty-stricken communities of Appalachia. This new website finally exposes this national disgrace for every American to witness. Our aspiring presidential leaders at the very least should be asked to explain their position on this shameful and corrupt enterprise.

Comments

[ChristopherLib]

Man look at these incoherent ravid Hillary haters crititizing RFK Jr's decisions to endorse Hillary. The fact is Hillary has as strong of a record on the environment as anyone running for President.

And it's ingoring this very critical issue. Mountain top removal is devestating. Oil based pollution/greenhouse gases tends to get all the attension while the effects of coal, arguably more distructive, tends to get ignored. We need to stand with great activists like RFK Jr and Al Gore because what is more important than protecting the planet we walk on.

[HeevenSteven]

Read Jeff Goodell's, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future. Great book!

[ahornick]

Have you had anyone evaluated the effect of opening fuel cell/solar cell/windpower equipment assembly facilities in coal mining communities? I don't expect they would be so high tech that miners couldn't make the transition with minimal training. If it were used as a means to offer them a healthier and safer occupation, maybe it would help reduce the number of voters supporting coal.

And when the talk comes around to "clean coal", remember to picture large energy gobbling refineries, pipeline construction and tanker trucks. By the time you're done looking at the entire energy cycle of "clean coal", you can bet there will be little savings in CO2 emissions or net energy expenditures.

[mouselion]

Yet another "toe" of the corporate giant demigod for us commonfolk to take our collective ax to. It's always an uphill battle to change things for the better -- but we gotta.

On Bill Clinton's environmental record, no it wasn't great -- but still a helluva lot better than GWB's. No matter who wins the presidential election, it's "We The People" who must lead.

[outnow]

Good post Bobby!

We must all recognize that the environment supports life on this planet. It should be the highest priority for the survival of the species. If you truly care or believe in a God, then you must take action. If only the zeal of the so-called religious right could be harnessed to this sacred duty, there would be environmental miracles over night.

Chief Seattle, an Indian Chief from the Pacific Northwest made a statement to Congress about the environment back in the 1890's in favor of conservation. Never more true than today was his statement.

We will look back one hundred years at the petty squabbles in Congress and at the self-serving and self-righteous garbage spewed by the candidates and members of Congress and realize how short-sighted and mean-spirited they were.

Thanks for your continuing efforts on behalf of our environment. I appeared as a guest on your show about the attorney general firings in San Diego. I met with our City Attorney this week, who is an environmental activist. It is the good old boys system of developer greed that destroys our environment and cause fires here.

We must break the back of the domination of our political system by the mega-corporations or we will lose our environment as well as our democracy.

[Kyuzo]

So, Robert...does that mean that you whole-heartedly support the expansion of nuclear power to meet our energy needs and dramatically reduce carbon emissions?

[IowaGirl]

Obviously Robert has been bought off by the Hillary forces. Why would someone who has devoted his life to environmental causes endorse someone who has never spared a thought for the environment, unless it was entirely expedient for her to do so. Hillary has nothing to add on the two biggest issues of the day: the war and global warming. She is not the right candidate for LEADING us away from the precipice where we are perched.

When I heard about his endorsement, I groaned out loud. Did she just promise him a Cabinet post outright? Are the Kennedys and Clintons so enmeshed? Why couldn't he at least withhold it until after she's been anointed by the Iowa and New Hampshire party bosses and their sheeple? I wonder why Robert thinks we are supposed to take seriously his devotion to the environment when he supports a presidential candidate who has never been exerted by the enormous threat of global warming.

It is simply too discouraging for words. The elite is all in cahoots, and it would be idiotic to think an elite would lead us away from this state of affairs.

[snowbird42]

I am saddened that you would endorse Hillary. What do you know that we dont.
Or have you been promised a White House spot.
Please say it isnt so.
I listen to Ring of Fire and cant believe you would sell out to big business.
Please tell us why.

[zjr909]

There is, of course, a miracle cure for strip mining, mountaintop mining - and every other environmental horror: it's for people to give a damn what happens in someone else's backyard. But we know all too well that that cure will go begging, just as it always has through human history. Show all the excavated mountaintops and toxic rivers you want, the average American will simply shrug and say "Hey buddy, I got my own problems. I'm determined this is the year I get my home theater system - and I mean to get it come hell or high water! And if that means some little snot-nosed redneck kid's gotta slide down a mountaintop into a pool of acid, then by God so be it! It's his problem, don't try to make it mine! Gotta run, I'll be late for church!" Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there's nothing these people's God can't justify. "If God meant for hillbillies to have a decent life, He'd have moved them to the 'burbs! Ya gotta love God!" King Coal, I'm afraid, is here to stay. It's the concrete expression of human selfishness and greed. Change the human heart, and every evil will disappear overnight. (Who knew the answer was there all the time?)

[chel]

I am a little confused here. I might be missing something.

I found the above article informative and provocative. I especially did since I was recently asked to take a survey that I think was designed to assess how effective the coal industry's campaign has been.

However, when I read the comments... quite a few seem to deal with what was not said in the above posting and what Robert F Kennedy JR was not doing.

Did I miss a previous posting or something in the news that should have been obvious to me?

Just wondering. I often do not follow mainstream news or commentary and could easily have missed the obvious.

Thanks for your help.

[LadyXoc]

Beyond the short-sighted ugliness of strip mining, 47 coal miners died in the USA in underground mines in 2006; over 6000 in China in the same year. The insanity is not having fuel cell and (yes) nuclear power.
If we had a president with even an ounce of vision, all this would have happened already.

[Norge]

With all of the "so called Legal litegation" being in the time warp, what actually needs to be stopped has about as much chance as a snow ball in a fireplace with the gas turned on.

Laws and attorneys are a profitable racket and provides a lukrative livelhood with much fringe attachments.

[ljsfolly]

I will try again... Sir I value what you and your family has done for our country and I hate what coal companies are doing as far as propaganda to use the media to make those they can sway think that coal is somehow clean now. They also don't have any mention about how unsafe it is to have miners dig it out especially in poor countries like china/russia etc then burn it without filters and endanger the earth even more. I am glad you have spoken up but not happy with the support of Hillary. Enviornment only is an issue for her while she is running for office as she never has stood and supported Al Gore and his message until it became a popular thing to do.

[JPHogan]

I am shocked! I cannot believe that he isn't today writing about the success of the "surge" towards helping improve the post Saddam days in Iraq. I cannot believe he isn't celebrating in words today such as a successful tale of bringing a tyrant and dictator, more of the likes of Hitler than most, up into the hands of his people for fair trial and conviction. Where was he during the Clintons' years? The Clintons' years when more options existed towards freeing Iraqies from stronghold of Saddam as soon as we had more accurate weapons and bunker busting bombs to reduce likelyhood of collatoral damage?

[ljsfolly]

Coal is a very dirty thing and people should be able to learn about that instead we have the big money backing coal production making tv commericals and ads in the print media. As much as you sir stand for the enviorment it saddens me to think you have sold out to hillary. As a democrat and a lover of what your family has done for and given in blood for this country as well as the Special Olympics for you to stand hand and hand with someone who has only spoken of the enviorment when it serves her and her desire for the job she thinks she should have and has done literally not a thing to show proof of her "stands" on the enviorment I no longer can respect you for that piece of who you say you are. You have acted your beliefs and for this stance you are wrong.