Coal Is the Enemy of the Human Race

New BP, Rio Tinto venture plans three "clean coal" plants

Last week, oil giant BP announced a new "clean coal" partnership, and it's already spewing big plans. With Rio Tinto, the world's third-largest mining company, BP created Hydrogen Energy, a cleaner-energy venture. Just one hitch: they're gonna make hydrogen by burning fossil fuels, which produces carbon dioxide, which ends the world. So the companies will plunge huge amounts of money into "clean coal" operations that separate out the carbon, then bury it under the sea. (Note to future generations: We know it sounds crazy. So, uh, did it work?) BP already had two such projects in the works, in California and Scotland; the companies announced a third today, a $2 billion plant in Australia. "Projects such as these have the potential to help deliver the carbon emission reductions which companies and countries around the world are now seeking," says BP CEO Tony Hayward. And a BP VP told the press that the carbon will, as one outlet reported, "remain buried 'literally forever,' or for hundreds of years."