I agree with Jim.  The mantra that coal is clean is a fraud and is like saying smoking is healthy.
 
But the public needs to know the full spectrum of how dirty coal is.  It is not just the burning...its all that goes before it gets to the boiler.
 
Here's what I wrote in a recent op-ed that appeared this Sunday in the Charleston Gazette-Mail:
 

There are serious barriers to carbon capture and sequestration. Legal liability from potential leaks from underground storage is unresolved. There are technical challenges of how to strip CO2 out of smokestack gases that are not close to being solved. Arch Coal's president recently predicted it is at least 15 years from being commercially viable. We don't have 15 years to wait.

On the other hand, there are very real economic opportunities in this Third Industrial Revolution: Jobs [in renewable energy technologies]!

Ask those concerned about the aesthetics of energy-producing technologies such as wind farms: What is pretty about a mountaintop removal site, or a coal pile, or a sludge pond filled with billions of gallons of toxic waste precariously dammed with an earthen wall above an elementary school?

I seriously recommend that the Sierra Club develop a series of ads showing the realities on the ground:
 
    1.  Coal Trucks speeding through villages, with coal dust flying off the tops
    2.  An aerial shot of Marsh Fork Elementary School showing the dust generating loading silos and earthen dam holding back, (maybe only temporarily? ) 3.0 Billion Gallons of Toxic waste less than 1/4 of a mile UPSTREAM FROM THE SCHOOL! 
 
An overlay pointing out there are 1200 such toxic ponds around Appalachia, and what happens to them after coal runs out and society is left to maintain these highly questionable earthen dams...a future Buffalo Creek waiting to happen?
 
The "real dirt" on Coal is more than just what happens when you burn it
 
Allan
 
Allan Tweddle
 
Quidvis recte factum quamvis humile praeclarum
Sir Henry Royce, 1924
 
----- Original Message -----
From: James Kotcon
To: Jonathan Rosenbaum ; Energy Committee
Cc: Maria Gunnoe ; Joe Gorman
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2008 8:50 AM
Subject: Re: [EC] Unclean Coal - The Reality Coalition

I think it may be a little too subtle.  Most people who are not paying attention, still won't pay attention because this goes way over their heads.  They need to make the point a lot more explicitly, perhaps by tying it to how much we are already paying for this in the form of health impacts, government subsidies, and electric rate increases for something that just does not exist.

Just my opinion.

JBK

>>> Jonathan Rosenbaum <freesource@cheat.org> 12/8/2008 12:21 AM >>>
I just saw an actual advertisement on the t.v. from the reality
coalition debunking the clean coal myth, this is also shown on their
website at http://action.thisisreality.org/ .  Good to see some big
bucks are going into a serious media campaign.

Here is the Sierra Clubs Dec. 4 press release:
http://action.sierraclub.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=81141.0

I am interested in what people think about this particular ad, do you
think it conveys its message effectively?

-Jonathan

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