Vivian Stockman is an organizer
with the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition.
It's the mother of all oxymorons: "clean coal."
But politicians and their financiers expect us to scarf down their doublespeak.
Their latest pet phrase is popping up in bills and proposals that would slop
billions in taxpayer money into the trough to feed corpulent ole King Coal.
Senator Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., and Senator Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., representing
respectively the second and third highest coal-producing states, have introduced
Senate Bill 60. So far, another ten Democrats and ten Republicans are
co-sponsoring the bill, including Republican Senators Mike Enzi and Craig Thomas
from the top coal producing state of Wyoming.
The bill would blow $1 billion of taxpayer money in ten years for "clean
coal" research and would toss $6 billion in tax breaks to power plants. It
exempts coal burning plants for ten years from Clean Air Act provisions that,
among other things, require the plants to measure mercury and acid rain forming
pollutants. Strange, why does "clean coal" need to hide from the Clean
Air Act?
This corporate welfare would subsidize coal at the expense of less polluting
natural gas. The bill works against truly clean energy sources such as wind,
solar and fuel cells. It works against taxpayers' wallets, lungs, children and
common sense.
Whatever the results of the taxpayer subsidized research might be, "clean
coal" technologies definitely won't reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, a
major heat-trapping gas that is contributing to the greenhouse effect. Coal is
primarily carbon, the combustion of which emits greenhouse gases and escalates
global warming. According to some economists, we should follow the United
Kingdom's lead and tax carbon emissions, not subsidize further pollution.
The Money Trail
Senator Byrd rolled in $67,611 from mining interests in the 2000 election,
according to the Center for Responsive
Politics. He ranks third and McConnell fifth highest amongst congressional
recipients of King Coal campaign donations. During the 2000 election cycle, coal
interests directly donated $1,269,879 to national political candidates. Among
those signed onto the bill are George Allen, R-Va., second highest recipient of
Coal's largess in 2000; Rick Santorum, R-Pa., third highest; Byrd, fourth;
McConnell, sixth; Mike DeWine, R-Ohio, seventh; and Thomas, eleventh.
Portions of Byrd's clean coal bill are incorporated into the National Energy
Security Act of 2001, introduced by Senate Energy and Natural Resources
Committee Chairman Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska. Coupled with the "clean
coal"
doublespeak, the Murkowski bill would open up the Artic National Wildlife Refuge
to oil drilling and would stoke up the nuclear industry.
President Bush, citing the power "crisis" in California, is not to be
left out of the coal chorus. His budget includes $2 billion for "clean
coal" over a ten year period. During the 2000 campaign, Bush was the number
one recipient of coal cash, raking in $114,521. Bush appointed Spencer Abraham
to head the Department of Energy. When he was a Republican Senator for Michigan,
Abraham ranked tenth highest amongst congressional recipients of coal cash. All
told, in 1999-2000, coal-mining interests gave over $3.8 million in soft money,
PAC and individual contributions. Most of the money was funneled to Republicans.
Abraham and Vice President "Oilman" Cheney are heading up a task force
to develop a national energy policy.
In her successful bid for one of West Virginia's House seats, Republican Shelly
Moore Capito received $17,750 from coal mining interests. She believes in
"clean coal" too, saying coal needs to be burned in an environmentally
friendly manner. It's not clear yet whether she will agree with Senator Byrd
that it's okay to dodge measurement requirements for mercury emissions. Mercury
is extremely hazardous, especially to unborn babies and children.
There's More to Coal Than Burning
Let's pretend for a moment that coal really can be burned cleanly. Before you
burn it, you have to extract it. For the traditional deep mining areas, that
means black lung disease for miners and eons of costly treatment for acid mine
drainage. For certain other coal bearing areas of West Virginia, Kentucky and
Virginia, that means more mountaintop removal, more disappearing mountain
communities, more forest destruction, more stream burials under valley fills,
more disrupted groundwater, and more unknown long-term effects to ecosystems.
Next, you have to process the coal. That means washing it for market, which
means huge slurry "ponds," with their toxic stew of heavy metals and
coal cleaning chemicals, looming over downstream communities. One such
"pond" breakthrough in October at a mountaintop removal site in
Kentucky released 250 million gallons of thick black sludge, creating the
worst-ever waste spill, for which cleanup is ongoing and costs are rising.
Officials have warned that the cleanup may never be complete.
Next, you have to transport the coal to market. If that's by truck, you have
more diesel-belching, overweight trucks careening dangerously along narrow
mountain roads, causing occasional fatal accidents and destroying bridges and
roads, which must be repaired at taxpayer expense. If that's by barge, then you
may get increased river dredging. One dredge proposed for the Kanawha River in
West Virginia would recover coal particles downstream from a chemical plant,
possibly stirring up toxin-laced sediment.
Finally, after the coal is hypothetically "cleanly" burned, the coal
ash -- known to contain heavy metals such as chromium, cadmium, arsenic and
mercury -- must be disposed of. Conveniently, there are no federally enforceable
rules for disposing of this ash. Most known storage methods are imperfect and
can lead to leach the ash's toxic contents into aquifers. Groundwater takes a
beating, and so, ultimately, does our health.
Coal's Dirty Habits
In the latest incoming salvos from the Coal PR machine, the "clean
coal" myth will continue its starring role. No doubt, we'll also hear
endlessly that coal provides over half the nation's electricity and plenty of
tax money. Never mind that in West Virginia and Kentucky, the coal producing
counties rank among the poorest counties in those already impoverished states.
What won't be mentioned is Coal's dirty habit of passing on its costs -- making
society, not the coal industry, pay for damaged infrastructure and disease and
death from air pollution. Many such externalized health costs are documented at
the Clean Air Network's
website.
We won't hear about -- gasp! -- energy conservation, energy efficiency or the
skyrocketing growth of truly clean energies. The Worldwatch Institute reports
that in 1999 worldwide coal use declined 3.3 percent and coal jobs plummeted.
Meanwhile U.S. wind power jumped by 29 percent.
Growth in solar and hydrogen fuel cells technologies also surged. Worldwatch
points out that wind farms are labor intensive, but not capital intensive.
Worldwide, jobs in wind energy fields are predicted to number three million by
2020! Wind power money tends to stay in the communities where the wind power is
generated. Whereas, in West Virginia, King Coal annually siphons about $1.5
billion of coal money to out-of-state coal barons.
With promising renewable energy, with new reports almost daily about
catastrophic global warming and the unraveling of our life-supporting
ecosystems, is this the time for our coin-operated Congress to pour billions
into an industry bent on dragging us all into extinction with it? Could that
money be better spent on constructing wind farms on already scalped mountains,
or on coalfield worker re-training in fuel cell manufacturing?
The answer is blowing in the wind.
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