Dear Al Gore: Speak Against the Rape of Coal River Mountain

Dear Al Gore:

Two months ago at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, you declared that, "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration."

BP and the Myth of a World 'Beyond Petroleum'

"We can't put all our energy in one barrel," says the BP billboard poster. The slogan is accompanied by fetching images of green plants, wind turbines and the sun. And BP's own logo, with its green tagline: Beyond Petroleum.

But this is confection. Until 2004, BP was called British Petroleum. And in the real world of business, the giant energy company continues to plunder most of its profits from - and sink the great bulk of its investment into - barrels of oil. Who is it kidding?

Day of Action Against Coal

In a stirring column in Monday's New York Times, editorial writer Lawrence Downes urged former Obama campaign volunteers to enlist in another tour of duty.

The country is not in the best shape to simultaneously fix a sinking economy, a withered government and an ailing planet. But it has no choice, and not much time. So why wait until January to get started?

Downes is right -- we can't wait.

Obama's Toughest Challenge

Of all the challenges facing President Barack Obama next January, none is likely to prove as daunting, or important to the future of this nation, as that of energy. After all, energy policy -- so totally mishandled by the outgoing Bush-Cheney administration -- figures in each of the other major challenges facing the new president, including the economy, the environment, foreign policy, and our Middle Eastern wars. Most of all, it will prove a monumental challenge because the United States faces an energy crisis of unprecedented magnitude that is getting worse by the day.

The U.S.

Time to Bury the 'Clean Coal' Myth

Who came up with the term "clean coal"? It is the most toxic phrase in the greenwash lexicon. George W Bush, by promising to pump hundreds of millions of dollars into the pursuit of advanced "clean" coal technologies, certainly popularised it. But I'd love to know where it came from. Any thoughts out there?

It is, of course, oxymoronic. Coal is about acid rain and peasouper smogs, asthma and mercury contamination, radioactive waste emissions and ripping apart mountains, killing trees, lung cancer and, of course, global warming.