We are enduring a $45 million advertising campaign touting "clean coal" as the solution to America's energy crisis. This is an attempt by "Big Coal" lobbyists (the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, in this case) to "greenwash" Americans into believing a lie that coal can be clean. Don't believe the hype!
MASONTOWN, Pa. - For years, residents here complained about the yellow smoke pouring from the tall chimneys of the nearby coal-fired
power plant, which left a film on their cars and pebbles of coal waste
in their yards.
E.ON, the energy group, tonight effectively threw in the towel on its plans to build a new coal-power station at Kingsnorth, blaming the recession.
In
a heavy blow to the government's plans to promote energy from coal,
E.ON said lower demands for electricity due to the recession had pushed
the need for the new plant in the UK to around 2016.
When the Environmental Protection Agency declared this year on September 11 that all pending mountaintop removal mining permits in four Appalachian states stood in violation of the Clean Water Act and required further review, Lora Webb didn't have time to join in any celebrations. As she and her husband, Steve, a coal miner, packed up their possessions and left his family's ancestral property outside Lindytown, West Virginia, Lora was more concerned about finding a place to sleep that night.
The World Bank is spending billions of pounds subsidising new coal-fired power
stations in developing countries despite claiming that burning fossil fuels
exposes the poor to catastrophic climate change. The bank, which has a goal
of reducing poverty and is funded by Britain and other developed countries,
calls on all nations in a report today to "act differently on climate
change".
Three environmental groups have put the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on notice that they intend to sue the agency, alleging it has failed to regulate water pollution from the nation's electric utilities, including discharges into rivers and lakes from hundreds of coal-ash ponds.
Defenders of Wildlife, the Sierra Club and the Environmental Integrity Project on Monday filed their notice of intent to sue the EPA - the first step in a federal lawsuit - alleging that EPA officials should have tightened their rules on power plant water pollution as far back as 1982.
Many readers of the New York Times probably dropped their jaws in amazement at the lead story
last Sunday: Seven-year-old Ryan Massey, of Prenter, West Virginia,
smiled back with capped teeth, the enamel devoured by toxic tap water.
His brother sported scabs and rashes, courtesy of the heavy
metals--including lead, nickel--in their bath water.
Verizon Wireless joined dozens of other companies last week in
dumping its ads on Glenn Beck's Fox New Channel program. Due to Beck's
"controversial track record," Verizon Wireless spokesman Jim Gerace told Color of Change organizers: "We made a decision that we don't want to be advertising on that program for a lot of reasons."
In a stunning blow to mountaintop removal blasting operations in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia this morning, two fearless protesters scaled massive trees and unfurled banners from their 80-foot-high platforms. Within 300 feet of the Massey Energy's Edwight mountaintop removal blasting site, above Pettry Bottom and Peachtree in Raleigh County, West Virginia, the protesters called on the federal agencies to crack down on the scandal-ridden West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection (WV DEP) and the stop the unsafe and reckless blasting in the area.
Last fall, Tom Zeller at the
New York Times Green Inc. blog wrote an eye-opening piece on a possible Indian government and corporate venture in Appalachia's coal mines.
And as the Sierra Club's Carl Pope pointed out, an even bigger coal story took place this week in India. Members of parliament from various political parties in the eastern part of the state of Maharashtra put aside their differences and called on the Prime Minister to stop a coal mine in a forest reserve.
