For Obama to say the right things about it.  It shows a lack of confidence in himself.

It is difficult to imagine any of the candidates saying anything radically different about coal.  So, Obama is positioning right in the center on this energy resource.  Illinois has several new coal mining and power plant projects either in construction or in the planning stage as well as the hoped for FutureGen project it is bidding on.  There is a huge constituency for coal in IL but I hear very little in the media here reflecting any adversary positions. Obama is on very safe ground with his position on coal and corn ethanol.  

Yes, this is all very unsatisfying, but I don't think we are going to be hearing anything really  visionary from any of the presidential candidates.  The vision is going to have to come from the bottom.  

Power down.

There's very little in the media reflecting the adverserial position of coal because the Ill Eviro's are very ambivalent about coal.  

The Illinois Sierra Club new burning plant in Springfield IL is something they are happy with.  The Clean Air Task Force is supporting a new 620mw plant in Taylorville.  This on top of giving Peabody Energy rights for its first plant ever, on the Prairie State Energy campus, by the corrupt Governor Blagojevich (D), who was endorsed by Ill Sierra Club after this.   No surprise there was one state Senate vote against giving FutureGen immunity from any unanticipated results in IL, and all else for, in a Democratic veto proof senate.  Corruption is at its roots.  

The tricky thing is deciding when people are lying for someone's benefit.   Sometimes politicians make happy talk and do nothing ... can I hope that ethanol and coal make happy talk leading to the election, but the right candidate will be lying?

What's that "cynically optimistic?"

Does sponsoring, or co-sponsoring legislation that would mandate huge amounts of ethanol, or provide lots of subsidies to coal, count in your opinion merely as "happy talk"?

If it's a serious bill (and not one of those designed to fail spectacularly) then that would dash my cynical optimism.

I didn't hear Obama directly at YearlyKos (I was there, but chose a different candidate's breakout session instead)...but can I still hope naively that his dodging and weaving will end if and when he is no longer worried that he has to go back to being Illinois senator?

This may not be answerable, but by "clean coal", does he mean coal gasification (IGCC) plus sequestration, or either one individually?  Does he know the difference?  
Does he understand it isn't necessarily possible to retrofit IGCC?  Does he understand that sequestration isn't geographically possible everywhere?
Does he really think either option is likely to be viable on a large scale any time soon?

It doesn't give me warm fuzzies about the state of his knowledge that he is still dancing around nuclear power either, just from a practical point of view...doesn't he know that making a dent in climate change with nuclear would require billions of dollars and god knows how many new plants...

Oy vey.

... like many, many legislators, views subsidies for carbon sequestration as the price that must be paid to buy the assent -- or at least prevent the implacable opposition -- of Big Coal to measures that fight global warming.

As long as coal remains as powerful as it is -- and gets so little concerted pushback -- I'm not sure he's wrong.

grist.org

Maybe so...though isn't it the utilities that will pay for sequestration, not Big Coal...not that they aren't intertwined.  I do take your point.

He was in Henderson Kentucky in June pushing an IGCC plant there. Clean Air Task FARCE, as my friend John calls it.