We learned with sadness this week that blasting has begun on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, site of a long battle between Massey Energy and local residents who want the mountain to be a site for 200 wind turbines instead of mountaintop removal coal mining.

Massey has ignored these pleas, despite research showing that a wind farm would bring more jobs and economic stability to the area – and certainly less environmental destruction.

And while we frequently talk about the impact of mountaintop removal coal mining, a Sierra Club Beyond Coal activity from our northwest region last week brings to the forefront the reality of coal mining in the western U.S. as well. The northwest “Dirty Little Secret” regional tour showed residents in Washington and Oregon the tour’s namesake: that the region is hooked on coal power, and its use and mining devastate many communities.

Part of the tour included speeches from Wyoming rancher LJ Turner and Northern Cheyenne Tribe members Otto and Barbara Braided Hair from southeast Montana. All three have seen the impacts of coal mining in the Powder River Basin up close, and they shared their experiences with the crowds along the tour’s stops.

America gets 40% of its coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana. In order to meet America's massive energy needs, each day over 80 coal trains leave the Powder River Basin bound for power plants across the nation.

For LJ Turner in Wyoming, coal mining is slowly taking away the vast acreage of his ranch.

“They’ve taken away our land, they’re taking away our water, they’re destroying our air – this is affecting us,” said Turner. “We’ve been ranching on government leases since the 1930s, and (mining) has taken 6,000 acres from us so far.” Campbell County, Wyoming, where Turner resides, produces a whopping 35% of the nation’s coal from a series of mining complexes that lay waste to miles of pristine prairie.

Turner said thankfully his family has 10,000 deeded acres that they cannot take away, but that land is still affected because the Powder River Basin mining operations are affecting the water.

The Powder River Basin includes the nation's largest surface mine, the Black Thunder Mine. Aquifers and rivers that once irrigated crops and watered cattle are now being used for power plants and dust suppression. Across the prairies and mountains of the Basin, communities have been divided. The region, once home to numerous Native tribes and then family ranches, is now a patchwork of coal mines, power lines, rail lines, and oil and gas wells.

For Otto Braided Hair, it was very important to share the realities of mining to folks who may not think about where their electricity comes from.

Otto said he wants to encourage people everywhere to think about more than just themselves.

He added that his Northern Cheyenne heritage implores him to speak out on this issue.

“The Cheyenne have a deep regard and respectful connection to the elements in the environment - the water, plants, animals, and air,” he explained. “Our highest, most important ceremonies are renewal of life and environment, or protection of life and environment.”

For those who hear about these damaging coal mining practices in the western U.S. or in Appalachia, LJ and Otto have advice on taking action.

Otto stressed the importance of thinking about more than the present.

“We must continue to challenge our people in authority to think way ahead in the future. When we’re long gone, there will be people living here. What is it going to be like three, four, five generations from now? That’s where the challenge has to be.

Stay tuned to this blog for updates (subscribe to our RSS feed here) on how you can take action to help save Coal River Mountain.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

This post co-written by Mary Anne Hitt, deputy director of the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign.

Very big news out of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) this morning:  The agency has determined that all 79 mountaintop-removal mining permits submitted to it for review by the Army Corps of Engineers would violate the Clean Water Act. After eight long years of rubber-stamp permits being issued during the Bush administration, this is one of the most dramatic and encouraging actions yet by the Obama administration, and marks a welcome return of the rule of law to the coalfields of Appalachia.

Mountaintop removal -- a devastating form of coal mining that involves blowing up mountains and dumping the former mountaintops into neighboring valleys, burying streams -- is governed by a patchwork of laws and federal agencies. Permits to bury streams with mining waste are initially issued by the Army Corps of Engineers, but EPA has ultimate oversight and may veto Corps-issued permits if they fail to comply with the Clean Water Act. 

During the Bush administration, EPA never opposed or challenged a permit, despite the fact that they clearly violated laws on the books to protect clean water and public health. Apparently, those days are over. This dramatic announcement by EPA that every single one of the 79 pending permits violates the Clean Water Act is a condemnation of the quality of permits being churned out during the Bush administration and is a testament to the Obama administration’s sincere commitment to science, transparency, and enforcing environmental safeguards.

All of these permits had piled up behind a court decision that was issued in February, and so most of them were written during the Bush administration. For those eight years, permits were being issued that violated the Clean Water Act, but EPA was prevented from objecting to the permits. Clearly there is a new sheriff in town.

It is important to note that this is only the first step in this process. These mountains have not been saved. The Army Corps now has 60 days to revise the permits and address EPA’s concerns. In our view, a sound reading of the science would determine that these permits cannot be issued. Some of the problems that are pervasive in all of these permits -- heavy metal pollution downstream, the inability to restore healthy functioning streams to replace what has been lost -- are problems that we just cannot engineer our way out of once a stream has been buried under millions of tons of rubble.

And ultimately, the Obama administration needs to take the step of reversing Bush-era rule changes that remain in place. Until President Obama fixes both the fill rule, under the Clean Water Act, and the buffer zone rule, under the Surface Mining Act, Appalachia will continue to suffer destruction under Bush’s regulatory regime. You can encourage the Obama administration to take those actions here.

Today’s announcement is just the latest stark reminder of the fact that, for too long, the coal industry has benefited from loopholes that no other industry enjoys. They bury streams with mining waste in violation of the Clean Water Act. They still lack any federal regulations for mercury pollution, a potent neurotoxin. They are allowed to dispose of toxic waste from their power plants -- coal ash -- again, with no federal regulations. It is time to close these loopholes, protect public health, and return the rule of law not just to Appalachia, but to all of America.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

A moment of truth has arrived for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and President Barack Obama, who has promised “unprecedented steps” to rein in the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining that is wrecking havoc across wide swaths of Appalachian mountains, valleys and communities.

Anti-mountaintop removal activists are hoping President Obama and EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson are about to make good on past promises to crack down on the destructive practice.Courtesy Jesse Jenkins / Energy CollectiveEPA is expected to announce decisions this week on over 100 pending permits for new or expanded coal mining projects utilizing mountaintop removal (MTR), which uses huge amounts of explosives to decapitate mountains and access the coal beneath, dumping the remains of these once-verdant Appalachian peaks directly on top of neighboring valleys and streams.

Mountaintop removal mining has already buried more than 800 miles of Appalachian streams and destroyed hundreds of square miles of woodlands in one of America's biodiversity hotspots, all while both the U.S. EPA and state environmental agencies have done little to curtail the practice. That's left it to activists to slow these projects down and prevent their irreversible damages.

But if recent news that the EPA is seeking to revoke the permit for the largest mountaintop removal mining project in West Virginia history is any indicator, the agency may finally be earning the "Protection" part of their name.

With a self-imposed, September 8th deadline now expired, the EPA is expected to issue an "initial list" this week identifying pending mountaintop removal projects that pose potential environmental concerns. The projects under EPA review have already been approved by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps), which has primary responsibility for approving surface mining projects. Any projects that EPA decides will have no "significant" environmental impact will sail forward "without further coordination with EPA," according to agency procedures (kindly explained by Coal Tattoo's Ken Ward Jr. here).

Projects posing an environmental risk - and any sane person is hard pressed to explain how blowing up a mountain has no environmental impact - will instead show up on a list sent to the Corps, triggering a process of further review and ultimately - if EPA does it's job right - the rejection of some if not all of these proposed mountaintop removal projects under the Clean Water Act.

For better or worse, the forthcoming EPA list of environmentally risky projects will mark an important step closer to the establishment of clear, public standards for what level of environmental impact the agency will allow or prohibit at MTR sites proposed throughout Appalachia. The EPA has so far avoided establishing any such clear public standard.

With hundreds of mountaintop removal sites now in the balance, this is the moment of truth for the EPA, Administrator Lisa Jackson, and President Obama to make good on promises to reign in this clearly environmentally devastating practice. As EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson explained on National Public Radio last week:

As we wait for the EPA's decision on the dozens of pending MTR permits, the Agency moved forward on a seperate front to block the largest proposed mountaintop removal site in West Virginia history in letter sent to the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers late last week.

Read the full story at www.WattHead.org, the new home of WattHead - Energy News and Commentary

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

Chuck Norris on Copenhagen

For a joyously peaceful week, residents beneath Massey Energy's Edwight mountaintop-removal site in the Pettry Bottom community in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia have received a reprieve from reckless blasting, fly rock, silica-dust showers, and potential flooding--thanks to tree-sitter Nick Stocks, who voluntarily came down at 10:00 a.m. on Monday. The seventh day into the protest, Stocks and fellow tree-sitter Laura Steepleton endured all-night sleep-deprivation tactics from Massey security guards, including the firing up of chainsaws last night. 

UPDATE, September 1, 10am EST:  According to Climate Ground Zero, both protesters "have been charged with trespassing, obstruction and littering, and their bail has been set at $25,000 each.  For the past five days, they endured psychological torture, verbal assault and threats."

A direct report from Rock Creek, West Virginia has been filed by Rainforest Action Network:http://understory.ran.org/2009/09/01/where-in-the-world/

UPDATE, Aug. 31, 5:00 p.m. EST: According to Climate Ground Zero, the State Police have confirmed that Laura Steepleton also descended the tree and has been arrested.

Stocks stated, “To this day the DEP [West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection] has acted as a thin, weak delegate for Big Coal in West Virginia. They have circumvented, sidestepped, dismissed, and lied to communities and individuals who look to them for protections that ought to assure healthy children, safe drinking water, and a continued existence in the valley. To this day, they have not done their job to even the slightest degree. When the government fails in its obligation to protect its people and communities are made unsafe and unlivable, it is the responsibility of all concerned people to turn attention to that failure and do all in their capacity to ensure the safety of the community. If the DEP doesn't do it, we must do it ourselves, and we will go beyond. We will stop the devastation of this mountain and protect the communities below. We will end mountaintop removal.

The security guards' actions with lights and air horns are making the situation less safe, Climate Ground Zero and Mountain Justice volunteer Charles Suggs said. “Depriving sleep from people who have to maintain safety systems to prevent a fatal fall endangers their lives."

Filmmaker Jordan Freeman has released an incredible aerial video of the massive Edwight mountaintop-removal site, the nearby coal-sludge impoundment, and the protesters nuzzled into the lush Appalachian forests.

As part of a growing national campaign to stop mountaintop removal, the protesters have drawn attention to the West Virginia DEP's lack of enforcement of mining laws, and the deleterious impact of the mountaintop-removal blasting, silica dust, and fly rock on the health of the local residents, their watersheds, and deciduous forests. Just last Friday, fly rock and boulders from a strip-mine site slammed into a home in eastern Kentucky.

For updates on the action or to support the defense fund, visit Climate Ground Zero or Mountain Justice. Also find out more about the West Virginia DEP's negligence.

Here's more of Jordan's film work on the recently released documentary Coal Country:

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

UPDATE, Sept. 2: The folks over at Credo Action are encouraging Verizon customers to communicate their displeasure with the company's sponsorship -- via Twitter, Facebook and Email.

--

Verizon Wireless needs to reconsider its "Friends and Family" feature--or, more pointedly, withdraw its support for Massey Energy's outrageously bogus "Friends of America" rally on Labor Day weekend.

Do 87 million Verizon Wireless customers, stockholders, and its Public Policy Development and Corporate Responsibility Department know that their company is a cosponsor of next week's climate change–denying, union-busting, pro–mountaintop removal rally organized by Massey Energy in Logan, W.Va.? (And what about Greenebaum Doll and McDonald, "a top 200 trademark law firm"--perhaps the rally's most odd sponsor?)

Does the Environmental Defense Fund, which recognized Verizon's Green Initiatives--to save energy, support solar and other renewable-energy sources, and lower its greenhouse-gas emissions--know that Verizon Wireless is sponsoring an event at which the featured speaker is Lord Christopher Monckton, a former science adviser to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and one of the most infamous global-warming deniers?

On its Green Press Kit site, Verizon claims, "Environmental stewardship is ingrained in Verizon's heritage, and the company prides itself on having a positive influence on the environment in which it operates." The page links to info on solar-energy and energy-efficiency measures undertaken by various offices.

Does Verizon know that 500 mountains have been destroyed, historic communities devastated, and watersheds polluted by mountaintop removal--and that Massey Energy has worked aggressively to not only wipe out our nation's carbon sink of deciduous forests in Appalachia, but also any attempts at renewable energy and development in the region? Read about Massey's role in strip-mining the last ridge on Coal River Mountain and impeding an incredible wind farm.

Do the Communications Workers of America, who represent Verizon technicians, know that the bogus "Friends of America" rally is a blatant anti-union event aimed at taking down the 70th annual United Mine Workers of America picnic, and that Massey Energy is defiantly anti-union?

So why is Verizon sponsoring this pro–mountaintop removal rally on a strip-mine site? Does Verizon support Massey Energy's ruthless mountaintop-removal campaign and its infamous CEO Don Blankenship? Check out this ABC News report on Blankenship's campaign to bankroll the West Virginia courts:

During their 4th quarter 2008 earnings call last spring, Massey Energy executives crowed that "2008 was a very exciting and successful year for Massey, by many measures, the most successful in our history. As you know, we undertook a very aggressive expansion plan in late 2007, and our members executed that plan almost to perfection in 2008." And then, in answering a question about how 2010 guidance could lower production 10 percent and impact the high head count, a Massey executive simply responded with the bottom line of profiteers: "I think the answer would be that we will be able to reduce the workforce with attrition fairly markedly," and "we also will cut back on salaries."

Bottom line: Massey Energy profits up, jobs down. Find out more about Massey.

And here's Lord Monckton:

George Monbiot has thoroughly debunked Monckton's anti–global warming thesis

Verizon should withdraw its sponsorship of this bogus rally immediately -- or explain its support of mountaintop removal, climate-change denial, and union-busting to its 87 million customers.

Call or text or email Verizon Wireless corporate leaders and let them know. CEO Dennis Strigl can be emailed at Dennis.Strigl@verizonwireless.com. Verizon HQ is here:

1 Verizon Way
Basking Ridge, NJ 07920-1097
(908) 559-7000

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Update below

The coal-industry group Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy, which doesn’t actually allow families to join, has a wonderfully crappy coloring book for children. Let’s have a look!

Plot, character development, and drawings that kids would actually want to color don’t seem to be priorities for "Eyes for Frosty." At least it picks a relevant topic in snowmen—they won’t be around for long if the coal industry succeeds in stomping all over climate change legislation. And kids will be stuck with the consequences of our fossil-fuel pollution, so it sort of makes sense to at least leave them with a coloring book.

All Images: Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy

It should be clear already: the artist’s heart just isn’t in this.

Meet Power Rock and his sidekick Spurt.

[Skipping boring stuff about prehistoric sediment]

But where did the mountaintops go?

Spurt finally gets some screen time.

Power Rock’s eyes get more evil-looking in each frame.

Wait, they can fly? Come back Power Rock! Come back Spurt!

Now go check out some real climate art.

Update: Alert reader SOLARKISMET informs us the Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity runs an annual Coal Calendar Art & Essay Contest for middle schoolers. It's sad, but these student artists show more talent than the "Eyes for Frosty" creator. Why, Illinois, why?

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

On “climategate”

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

The word “family” serves as code so often in political discourse that it can be tough to know what it really means. In the case of a Pennsylvania coal-industry group, it seems to mean, quite clearly, “not families.”

Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy (FORCE, naturally) does not allow families to join, according to a 2007 version of its website:

Under, “Who Should Join FORCE?” the site states, “Any Pennsylvania company doing business with the coal industry should be a member of FORCE.” (Hat tip to Sourcewatch for linking to the archived site and to Miles Grant at National Wildlife Federation for pointing it out.)

The organization’s current site provides even less information. It doesn’t even explain the group’s name clearly: “Families Organized to Represent the Coal Economy, Inc. (F.O.R.C.E.) better known as F.O.R.C.E. - families for PA coal is an organization dedicated to promoting the importance of Pennsylvania's coal …”

The group lists mining companies and related businesses as its “signature sponsors” for 2009. A crop of billboards along the state's highways promoting “clean coal” bear the group’s name, writes Grant.

I called FORCE’s headquarters to ask about the membership policy and about why it would use a misleading name if, in fact, the group is comprised of businesses, not families. FORCE manager Jeanine Rainone told me she wouldn’t be able to talk today, or tomorrow, or anytime soon, sorry for the inconvenience.

Not to worry—I found something better than an explanation. Much, much better: FORCE has a propagan-tastic children’s coloring book, “Eyes for Frosty.”

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

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. The politicians declared: "Adani Power Ltd has been allocated 1,750 hectares of rich forest land having coal reserves at Lohara neat Tadoba. We are of the considered view, based on incontrovertible information, that operation of the proposed opencast coal mine will cause irreparable damage to the rich biodiversity in and around TATR [Tadoba-Andhari Tiger Reserve] and seriously endanger the very existence of the tiger."

For more information on India and coal, check here.

For Carl Pope's own dispatches from India this summer, go here.

Back in Appalachia: Over the past year, demanding a sustainable economy, green jobs and an end to the destruction of their mountain communities and watersheds, an uprising against government-sanctioned mountaintop removal mining in the Appalachian coalfields by residents and national environmental organizations has emerged as one of the most powerful social justice movements in the country.

A movement against a massive bauxite strip mine in the mountains of Orissa, in India, has now made international headlines. Last week in London, mountain villagers from the Dongria Kondh tribe converged on the British finance center to demand a halt to British mining company Vedanta's intent to destroy their sacred mountain and community.

Joining up with the international human rights organization, Survival, and best-selling author Arundhati Roy and various London celebrities, the Dongria Kondh have emerged as a fearless and inspiring example of local resistance against the hell-bent ways of absentee mining companies.

Roy declared: "If Vedanta is allowed to go ahead with its plans for mining the Niyamgiri Hills for bauxite it will lead to the devastation of a whole ecosystem, and the destruction of not just the Dongria Kondh tribal community, but eventually all those whose livelihoods depend on that ecosystem."

With the blessing of the Indian Supreme Court, Vedanta plans to launch its own version of mountaintop removal on the Niyamgiri mountain, which the Dongria Kondh worship as their god. According to Survival: "The mine will destroy the forests on which the Dongria Kondh depend and wreck the lives of thousands of other Kondh tribal people living in the area."

The Dongria Kondh, though, aren't surrendering to the huge multinational company. Hardly. The mountain community has set up road blocks, organized human chains to stop the incoming bulldozers, and reached out to the international community to bring pressure on the British mining company.

The Survival organization has done a great job at debunking the mining company's bogus claims of jobs, environmental protection, community support or the even more despicable disregard for human habitation in the proposed blasting area.

Sound familiar? These are the talking points of Big Coal and its mountaintop removal campaign in Appalachia.

Here is a link to Survival's debunking of the corporate lies.

And here's a trailer for the film on the egregious situation, Mine: Story of a Sacred Mountain:

For more information, go here.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

The U.S.-India climate ‘partnership’

Want to get really angry about health care and global warming? Not the ginned-up rage of the Obama-was-really-born-in-Kenya crowd, but an anger that fires you up to take action in the name of justice? Anger like the rage felt by so many white Northerners and Southerners in 1963 when they saw Birmingham's fire hoses turned on patriotic African-Americans, a rage so profound that they too joined the civil rights revolution?

Well I invite you, in a brief audio and video tour, to bear witness to what's happening in Wise County, Virginia. This Appalachian region, only a few hundred miles from the policy fog in Washington DC, clarifies what the health care/climate policy fight is all about. And if you're not angry enough to take action after hearing these voices and seeing these images, blame yourself when powerbrokers like Don Blankenship (more on him later) once again have their day.

Let's start with what's good about Wise County: its hard-working families. Taking a look at this community calendar, you'll see all that is right with rural American communities and their urban counterparts. From January to December, the citizens of Wise County celebrate the legacy of Dr. King (January 19), perform plays (March 17), honor our country and its veterans (July 4 and October 8) and get involved in all of those glorious community, spiritual and volunteering activities that capture the essence of the American experience. In Wise County, it's not hard to find the best of ourselves.

But one item on the same calendar reveals what is not right: the July 24-26 "Remote Area Medical Health Fair" at the local fairgrounds. Sound innocuous? Well take ten minutes to listen to this recent report from NPR on the event, hosted in Wise County, which served 2,700 "tired and desperate" people from 17 different states. In the words of NPR, it was "a Third World scene with an American setting." It's heartbreaking: entire families waiting in line overnight to get just some of the basic health care that they cannot afford. Hear about the young boy with a battered nose and an oozing ear; the single mom with a gallbladder so enlarged it's about to kill her; and the many patients gettingall of their teeth pulled. That's right -- for over 20 years, while DC politicians have been promising a better health care system, your fellow Americans in and around Wise County have been suffering. Angry yet?

And take a guess what industry dominates this part of Appalachia. No surprise: it's coal. Like in so many parts of the country, excessive reliance on coal means high levels of poverty -- the kind of poverty that creates the need for this health "fair." A recent study out of West Virginia University puts it clearly: "Coal-mining economies are not strong economies. [Coalfield communities] are weaker than the rest of the state, weaker than the rest of the region, and weaker than the rest of the nation." There's no doubt that the thousands of employees of the (increasingly capital-intensive) coal industry are hard-working, admirable people; the problem is that in the 21st century, coal helps them at the expense of others.

The second part of coal's legacy in this area is mountaintop removal. Take this extraordinary virtual flyover of Wise County to view its devastation:

The human effects of this destruction are captured in the words of Wise County's Kathy Selvage. Listen to her speak about the "terrible injustice' created by coal, literally in her backyard:

And memo to the Birther crowd: if you think the fight against mountaintop removal is some godless liberal conspiracy, see this testimony from Kathy: "It was my Mother's custom to have her early morning Bible reading on her front porch. [Because of mountaintop removal,] she was forced to move inside because she could no longer stand the noise, dust, and smell that was invading her 'Morning with the Lord'."

In Wise County, poverty, environmental destruction and powerlessness come together, and the result -- despite the resilience of hard-working Americans who call it home -- is sick families, destroyed mountains, a dysfunctional economy and at least one good lady who finds it harder to pray.

Now there certainly are winners in all of this: take Don Blankenship, CEO of Massey Coal, a modern version of Daniel-Day Lewis's ruthless oilman in There Will Be Blood. It's hard to know where to start with this guy:

So climate warriors, let's get angry: about inexcusable poverty, the destruction wrought by coal, and the lobby-laden system that helps Blankenship thrive while too many of the good people of Wise County suffer.

And if you are angry, what are you going to do about it? Will you be willing to get arrested standing up to Massey Coal, like Jim Hansen? Lead civil disobedience against Dominion Power, right there in Wise County? Or at least, show up to your elected officials' town meetings and speak loudly and clearly in support of health care and climate change legislation? With some hard work, maybe we can reveal Blankenship and his ilk for what they are: the Bull Connors of the dirty-energy age. There's no time to waste.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

Climate Denial Crock of the Week: The big mist take

Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis, Richard HeinbergThere isn't nearly as much coal left as most people think. "Clean coal" will run down limited reserves even faster. If humanity doesn't begin massive, sustained investment in renewable power sources immediately, civilization could be at risk before the end of the century. And that's without considering the impacts of climate change.

Such is the stark conclusion of Richard Heinberg's Blackout: Coal, Climate and the Last Energy Crisis, which despite its dry tone and technical complexity is one of the scariest f*cking books I've ever read.

Right now the U.S. is on the verge of a momentous gamble, as reflected in the ACES bill: betting that long-term emission reductions can be achieved via carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). ACES postpones serious domestic reductions for over a decade on the assumption (hope?) that CCS technology will mature and drop in price enough to enable the indefinite use of coal.

Similarly, at U.N. talks it is fervently hoped that CCS will enable coal to continue driving developing-world economic expansion (as oil declines, coal use has risen). Nothing approaching WWII-scale investment in renewables and efficiency is on the table.

It's a game-theoretic exercise played for Dantean stakes. If Heinberg is right, policymakers are operating under two fateful, and possibly fatal, illusions.

First, they think the U.S. has a "250-year supply" of coal, and that China, Russia, Australia, and India have similarly inexhaustible supplies. They're almost certainly wrong.

The bulk of Heinberg's book is a methodical walk through several recent studies on coal reserves. (One of the most shocking facts about coal reserves is how little we know about them -- they were scarcely studied in any systematic way before 2005.) If you have time for just one, check out "Coal: Resources and Future Production" [PDF], by Germany's Energy Watch Group. It's a page-turner!

A key feature of recent studies is that they abandon the conventional but misleading expression of coal supplies: reserves-to-production ratio, or R/P. Divide total reserves (how much is in the ground) by the current rate of production (how much we're using) and voilà, a big number -- a 250-year supply, even.

But rates of fossil-fuel production are not, indeed cannot physically be, static. The easiest reserves are found first. Over time, as more accessible seams are mined out, what remains is increasingly difficult to obtain and expensive to transport. In every coal field, every country, every region, the energy-return-on-investment (EROI) rises, peaks, and declines. Post-peak, it takes more and more energy to reach the coal and get it where it needs to go. The crucial issue is not how much coal is left in the ground but where we are on the curve, and more to the point, when we cross into negative EROI, the crucial line after which it takes more work to get coal out of the ground than coal returns in energy.

Obviously that line is a moving target. It depends on commodity prices, technology, the cost of transport, and any number of other dynamic variables. Nonetheless, it's possible to sketch a basic bell curve for EROI (a "Hubbert linearization," in dorkspeak) for coal production. That's what the Energy Watch Group (EWG) and others have recently done, and as it turns out, the news ain't pretty.

(This will all sound very, very familiar to the peak-oil crowd. Turns out coal is a finite fossil fuel too!)

According to the EWG, global coal production will, best-case scenario, peak and begin declining about 20 years from now. Yikes.

The second fateful illusion: that carbon capture and sequestration can enable the continued expansion of coal use.

Industry insiders admit that CCS technology will not be developed, and costs reduced enough to prompt widespread adoption, until 2035 at best. By then, if CCS becomes a primary climate strategy and EWG-style analysis is correct, humanity will be in the grips of four interrelated costs and risks associated with coal. Quoting Heinberg:

• the need for substantial investment in new CCS technology;
• higher coal prices and shortages due to depletion;
• higher electricity generating costs due to the use of IGCC and CCS; and
• lower electricity generation efficiencies due to the use of CCS, requiring more coal to produce an equivalent amount of electricity.

So at a time when supplies are declining, while commodity and transportation costs are rising, we'll need much more coal to get the same amount of electricity from a more expensive generation technology. Surely you see the wisdom of the strategy.

Another issue that doesn't get the press it deserves is the investment necessary to produce the infrastructure for widespread CCS. It's mind-boggling. Ultimately humanity would be burying more than twice the amount of CO2 that it digs up in coal, more than eight times the amount of yearly volume handled by the global crude oil industry (according to Vaclav Smil). Building the new-gen plants, running more railroad cars to bring the increased coal supplies necessary to run them, building and burying all the CO2 pipelines, maintaining CO2 burial fields ... it all requires not only an enormous amount of money but an enormous investment of energy, and fossil energy is a finite commodity.

Heinberg's conclusion: it's renewables or nothing.

Imagine the remaining reserves of oil and coal as a savings account. There's a lot in the bank, but pretty soon income is going to decline and savings are going to get drawn down. The question before us is: how fast should we draw down our fossil savings, and what should we spend them on?

Spending on CCS poses a fateful opportunity cost. If scaling up renewables and efficiency (R&E) is difficult today, it will be doubly so when savings have been drained pursuing CCS infrastructure. According to the scenarios developed by Heinberg and the Post Carbon Institute, massive CCS investment would at best delay an energy crash by a decade or two. I'm dubious of these kinds of scenario exercises, but it's inarguable that after all that fossil energy is spent on CCS, it can't be retrieved. There's no do-over. If it doesn't work out, the energy needed to build out R&E infrastructure will only be more expensive.

One subject on which Heinberg strikes me as unduly pessimistic is the potential for R&E. He and the Post Carbon Institute think the best-case scenario is a massive, controlled, humane reduction in human population alongside a transition to a much lower-energy, localized form of life. For my part, I incline bright green. Worldchanging's Alex Steffen put it well in a recent tweet: "To be bright green is to know that a sane respect for planetary limits imposes no meaningful limits on humanity's potential, at all." It is possible to flourish sustainably.

But that's an argument for another time. At minimum, a sustainable future requires the best possible understanding of available coal reserves and their likely cost. If "clean coal" turns out to be a phantom, chasing it will not only waste time, it may foreclose the only decent options we have left.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

In an exclusive interview with Grist, Nancy Sutley, chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, says coal isn't going away anytime soon.  She also says the administration can't promise a slowdown in mountaintop-removal mining.  Here are highlights in video and text. (For more, read the full Q & A.)

Want more? Read the full Q & A.

Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / GristNancy Sutley is sitting in the catbird seat as America's environmental landscape begins to radically shift under the Obama administration. As chair of the White House Council on Environmental Quality, she is President Obama’s chief environmental adviser, coordinating activities across more than half a dozen federal agencies on issues ranging from climate change to water quality to land conservation.

Sutley, a Latina and the first high-level openly gay official to join the Obama administration, served from 2005 to 2009 as deputy mayor for energy and the environment in Los Angeles. There she helped quadruple renewable energy production, cut greenhouse gas emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels, and push through a program to cut air pollution from cargo ships at the region’s enormous ports. An outspoken advocate of environmental justice, Sutley also served at EPA during the Clinton administration, where she worked on clean-air protections.

For all her achievements in the environmental realm, Sutley is no idealist. She promotes the development of cleaner coal technology, reasoning that “clearly coal is a part of our energy mix now and it's likely to be so in the future.”

I met with Sutley at CEQ headquarters in a cozy brick townhouse next door to the White House, where we discussed climate policy, the fruits of the economic stimulus bill, and her role as an agent of environmental change.

Q. Let’s start with your job description. You coordinate federal activities on environmental policy. What does this entail on a practical level?

A. CEQ was created back in the 1970s to provide some policy guidance to all the agencies toward the U.S. meeting its environmental goals. On a day-to-day basis it can mean anything from thinking about the environmental trends and what are the pressing environmental issues affecting the country, to trying to resolve differences of opinion between agencies on very specific environmental questions.

Q. The House may soon vote on the landmark Waxman-Markey climate bill. You have said that President Obama is willing to personally intervene to ensure the passage of strong climate legislation. In what ways are you and he working behind the scenes to rally support for this bill?

A. The president’s been very up front. He met with the House Energy and Commerce Committee Democrats, and he’s talked about it repeatedly, that he wants to see comprehensive energy and climate legislation on his desk for him to sign. He has urged, as we’ve all urged, Congress to continue to move forward on acting on comprehensive energy and climate legislation, to foster this clean energy economy, to foster green jobs, and to tackle this pressing problem of climate change.

Q. Has President Obama said that specific provisions need to be included in the bill for it to be acceptable?

A. I don’t think that he has, and [I don't think that] now it is appropriate to draw lines in the sand. I think Congress is doing its job, it’s debating about the best ways to approach very important issues.

He has called for and been consistent in calling for an 80 percent reduction in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2050. I think that’s generally an accepted, scientifically based goal, the goal we need to meet to try to deal with the worst potential effects of climate change. He’s also talked about protecting consumers, in addition to promoting clean energy and creating green jobs. There’s a lot of different ways you can go about doing that and it’ll be an important component of the bill going forward.

Q. Do you think that passing a moderate bill would be worse than passing no bill at all? Some people have voiced concerns that the bill might get stripped of its strongest provisions.

A. I think that the U.S. needs to deal with these energy issues. This has been a lament in Washington for many years, that we don’t have an energy policy. We are on the cusp of being able to really move our economy in a different direction, in a cleaner, more sustainable direction. There’s not always one way to do it. And it’s not just the only opportunity--we’ve made important efforts and investment through the [economic] recovery act in clean energy and in green jobs.

Q. The stimulus package allocated tens of billions of dollars to clean energy development and green jobs promotion. Can you give examples of energy projects and green jobs that are emerging as a result?

A. One of the important things that the recovery act does is provide very significant funding for green job training. That’s something we really never had. The Department of Labor is working very hard to get that money out the door to provide a platform for people to be trained for these new green jobs.

In terms of clean energy, the Department of Energy [is] working on loan guarantees for money for the smart grid. The Department of Transportation [recently announced] the first money on high speed rail, which is a really exciting opportunity to change fundamentally the transportation system, to bring us into the 21st century with respect to rail, which can help to reduce pollution in our cities and reduce our contributions to greenhouse emissions as well. Money for weatherization, money for improving the energy efficiency of government buildings—the U.S. government is the largest landlord in the country, we own thousands of buildings and manage thousands of buildings—to try to reduce their environmental footprint. The president said when he signed the recovery act that he wanted not only to stimulate the economy now, but to provide the foundation and the investment in this clean energy future.

Q. Sometimes building clean-energy projects butts up against protections for endangered species and land. How can you speed up renewable energy projects when you confront such barriers?

A. What’s important is for there to be a cooperative and concerted effort. Most of these projects will be built by the private sector, but we have an important role to play thinking about putting renewable [energy projects] and transmission in places where it’s appropriate to have them, where you have the best resources, but also to stay away from areas that are very sensitive.

I think there’s an important effort underway between the Department of the Interior and the Department of Agriculture -- which manages the Forest Service, which manages a lot of land -- between the Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, to try to work together as federal agencies to speed up the process, to not shortchange the environmental review. There [have] been efforts at the state level, in California and the Western states, to try to identify areas where the renewable resources are good, and to try to identify areas that are particularly sensitive that you want to stay away from. So I think with the federal government working together with the states, local governments, the environmental community, and the people who want to build these projects, we can come up with a sensible, efficient way to move forward with projects that will help move our country toward a cleaner energy future.

Q. Will there be trade-offs? Will we have to decide that clean energy may need to trump endangered-species protection? Or do you think it’s possible to do it all?

A. I think we have frameworks [so] that we can do it all. The National Environmental Policy Act reviews are intended to do that, to understand what the environmental impacts [are] of actions that the federal government’s involved in. Many states have similar kinds of reviews, so we don’t have to make tradeoffs between endangered species and transmission lines. It’s possible in a smart way, if we’re working together, if we’re planning ahead and making smart choices, that we can do both. I don’t think people have really anything to fear by the expansion of renewable energy.

Q. Mountaintop-removal coal mining has gotten a lot of attention recently for the harm that it’s causing Appalachian communities and waterways, and I know that the Obama administration has said that you will scrutinize permits more rigorously. Do you think this means we’re going to see less mountaintop mining as a result?

A. I don’t know the answer to that right now. There are a bunch of permits sitting in limbo because of some court decisions, and the reviews of those will have to move forward, and the EPA and the Army Corps of Engineers will have to make decisions based on science and the law. The Department of Interior has asked to withdraw a last-minute Bush administration rule under the surface mining law that they oversee. So with respect to projects that are pending right now, I don’t know the answer to that, but they will have the scrutiny they deserve.

I think everybody acknowledges, the president has said it, and I think everybody you’ll talk to acknowledges that there are serious environmental impacts associated with mountaintop mining, and we have to address them going forward, and we have to look at what we can do under our existing authority to strengthen the oversight of these projects and to see that we’re using those authorities fully to try to address the environmental impacts of mountaintop mining. So again, does it mean fewer projects? I don’t know the answer to that. But it will mean that we will deal with the environmental impacts of those projects.

Q. Another hot-button issue is “clean coal.” Do you think it’s misleading to imply that mining and burning coal can be clean?

A. I think what we have to recognize is that all forms of energy production have environmental impacts. The only one I think that doesn’t is energy conservation. So we have to consider what are the best ways to address those environmental impacts. I think there is hope for technology that will help to reduce both the environmental impacts of mining coal and producing electricity with coal. There are promising technologies to deal with the carbon dioxide using carbon capture and sequestration. The truth of the matter is we’ve had a generation of coal plants that have been built using basically 1950s technology and we really have to push to innovate in that technology because clearly coal is a part of our energy mix now and it's likely to be so in the future.

But even if we were to stop using coal tomorrow, it’s used around the world and we have to deal with its environmental impacts. So investing in the technology, investing in innovation in how coal is used to produce electricity, is very important not only for our country and our economy but really for the entire world. And we can be a leader in providing that technology, we can be a leader in providing the innovation and research that will get us to be able to deal with the effects of burning coal and try to address carbon capture and sequestration. These are important technologies that we’re going to need.

Q. A clean environment should be a universal civil right, and yet it’s widely perceived to be an issue of a narrow, white, privileged slice of America. The Obama green team is a diverse group. How are you helping to shift the way Americans think about the environment and potentially expanding this narrow issue into a universal political movement?

A. I’ll take a little bit of issue with the premise because I’ve worked here in Washington, I’ve worked in California, at the state level in Los Angeles, where the environment is an issue for everyone. People care about the environment they experience, as they experience it. People care very much about the environment in their communities, they care about the health of their families and their community, they care about the places that they live.

It doesn’t always get translated into the big policy issues of the day, but I think this team, the Obama administration, the team here at CEQ, we are people with a really broad range of experience. A lot of us have worked at the community level, at the state and local level, where there is no doubt that the environment is an issue people care about across the board. So I think we bring that perspective, and reaching out to people across a broad range of communities is a very important issue for us. And we’ve got Van Jones here, who’s a special adviser at CEQ on green jobs. We believe, and I know the President believes, that the promise of a clean energy economy will reach across the entire spectrum of our country.

The other thing I’d say about this theme is that the experience really goes beyond the environmental agencies. We have people in positions, in agencies, that don’t have the environment in their title, who care very much about these issues. Secretary Solis in the Department of Labor sponsored the first environmental-justice legislation in California. John Donovan, the secretary of [Housing and Urban Development], came in with a lot of experience trying to green public housing in New York and bringing that same ethic here, to think about sustainable and livable communities. So I think it’s not just the type of people, but also that the environment cuts across so many issues that we deal with, and we have a great team in place who bring those experiences here to Washington.

Q. What policy developments would you like to see with regard to environmental justice?

A. What unfortunately I think happened over the last eight years was that those voices didn’t have a place in the administration’s discussion about the environment. The first thing we need to do is give those voices a place as we put policy together. We’ve been very active in reaching out into a diverse set of communities. As I talk to people to hear what they’re thinking, I think there’s really a lot of excitement about the possibilities of growing this green economy and creating a clean energy economy of green jobs and what it can mean to communities which have been suffering a long time with both economic deprivation and environmental harm. So there’s real opportunities there, and most important is to start the conversation with them. And that we’ve started to do.  And we’ll make sure that as we move forward on this clean energy economy, that it really does touch all parts of our economy and all parts of our country.

Q. What’s the most fun part about your job, and the hardest part?

A. The hardest part is that, having spent the last 13 years in California and coming back here, the weather really stinks, so sometimes I get up in the morning and I think, why did I leave California?

The most fun, as my experience has been doing jobs like this in other places, is the people you get to work with. It’s an incredible group of people, and we’re working for someone who’s a very inspiring leader, who cares about these issues. And I think we feel the sense of possibility, the hope that’s out there in this country that we can move our country into a better place, and that this clean energy economy is really an integral part of a vision for the future. To work on forward-looking policies with a great group of people is great, and it’s wonderful and I look forward to many happy years doing it.

Be sure to check out video highlights from the interview.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

In a wide-ranging interview with Grist, EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson hit on a number of hot-button topics. Here are highlights in video and text.  (For more, read the full Q & A.)

Want more? Read the full Q & A.

Photo illustration by Tom Twigg / GristLisa Jackson has a flair for the unexpected. At our interview, she wore a saucy pink suit and pointy pumps—not typical attire for the nation’s most powerful authority on the environment. She is joyous and quick to laugh, as demonstrated during her recent appearance on The Daily Show -- a first for a Washington eco-wonk.

Jackson made news during her first few months as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency by issuing an initial finding that greenhouse gases jeopardize public health and welfare -- a move she described to Grist as part of a “solemn responsibility” to follow through on a directive from the Supreme Court. This finding, when finalized, will enable the EPA to directly regulate greenhouse gases from all sources, giving the agency more power and purview than ever before.

Formerly an EPA employee for 16 years, Jackson served as commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection from 2006 to 2008 under Gov. Jon Corzine (D), where she won praise from enviros for her work on climate change and clean water and criticism for a sluggish toxic cleanup program.  Now back at the EPA, she is the first African American to head up the agency. 

I met with Jackson at EPA headquarters to get her take on Obama’s “green Cabinet,” the scourge of mountaintop removal, and the fight against climate change.

-----

Q. You’ve served almost half a year as EPA administrator. What’s the best part about your job?

A. The best part is being a part of President Obama’s administration. It’s starting to hit me -- the real change in attitude about the environment, the fact that the president sees the environment as a crucial step towards our economic recovery. He sees clean energy as part of the solution. So I have a boss and a bunch of colleagues in the Cabinet who actually value our role, even though we certainly have moments where we have spirited discussions and disagreements over how to get something done. But at its heart, we’re talking about a policy team that really works together to move our country forward on clean energy and addressing climate change.

Q. What’s the hardest part?

A. We work hard. President Obama expects from us a level of work that means that because we have such a broad agenda here at EPA, we knew we had to come out swinging. We wanted to set a high standard. Our challenge now is to make sure that, as we have announced new positions -- whether it’s dependence on science, transparency, the law -- that we actually follow through and that change is felt throughout the organization.

Q. You're a key member of the so-called “green team,” which we sometimes hear in environmental circles referred to as the “dream team.” Is that an actual team?

A. We started to use the term “green Cabinet”; it pops up from time to time on my schedule and I really like that. It’s a large team; we meet at least monthly. It includes transportation and agriculture and commerce and labor and the president’s office of energy and climate change -- that’s Carol Browner and Nancy Sutley over at [the Council on Environmental Quality] and John Holdren at [the Office of Science & Technology Policy] and Shaun Donovan at [the Department of Housing and Urban Development] and Secretary Vilsack over at Agriculture and Secretary Chu at the Department of Energy and Secretary Salazar over at Interior. What a group, to sit around and really try to find ways to break down the silos that have traditionally stymied federal policymaking and action.

Just [recently] we did a hearing on smart growth, and to sit next to the secretary of transportation and hear him talking about the importance of thinking smartly about land-use planning as part of the transportation bill, was just extraordinary messaging. And we were with Secretary Donovan from HUD; he’s been quite an advocate as well.

Q. [Last week] the Obama administration released a report on climate impacts across the country. What was the EPA’s role in this report and what is its significance?

A. We have a draft finding that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, so the science that went into that finding is a lot of the same science that is built upon in the report. Information that we have, and also that [the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration] collects in the National Weather Service, and other scientists -- lots of information they’ve synthesized to paint this picture of how climate will impact our country.

Q. Are you waiting to see what Congress will do before you make a move on regulating greenhouse gasses?

A. I’d like to remind people that EPA had a legal obligation given to us by the Supreme Court almost two years ago to basically address greenhouse gases in the context of the Clean Air Act. The Clean Air Act says that EPA has authority if greenhouse gases are a criteria pollutant—meaning they endanger public health and/or welfare—and I thought it was just extremely important that rather than play any kind of gamesmanship we just speak to that one issue.

I would like to see new legislation. The president has called for new energy and climate legislation. It’s extremely important for our country, including the discussions that are happening in Congress right now amongst all of the different interests that have to be part of the energy solution that the president wants.  That being said, I thought it was a solemn responsibility that I had as administrator of the EPA to follow the law and do what the Supreme Court said. And certainly if we find that greenhouse gases endanger public health and welfare, that requires EPA to act from a regulatory standpoint.

And of course we have to watch Congress because if law passes that takes away that authority or changes it in some way, we have to be ready for that.

Q. The Waxman-Markey climate bill would limit the EPA’s authority to regulate greenhouse gases. Would this tie your hands?

A. I think the drafters have rightfully said, “Listen, if we’re going to pass a new law specifically to address climate change, we also realize that the Clean Air Act is out there and provides uncertainty if we have a law that compels a cap-and-trade program.” Those discussions are ongoing; certainly states have had a lot to say about it. And I think our position is that right now we’re going to continue to carry out our responsibilities to the American people. That means closing the comment period on the endangerment finding, and that closes June 23. That means moving and working with [the Department of Transportation] and the state of California on auto regulations.

Q. In the lead-up to international climate negotiations in Copenhagen in December, other countries are watching what we do. Do you think it will inhibit our ability to lead at Copenhagen if we don’t have a domestic climate policy in place?

A. This is truly one of those situations where, as a globe, we have to come up with a solution. A lot of great work was done at Kyoto, a lot of great work was done in Bali. It's been and continues to be a very important and very vigorous dialogue. Led by Todd Stern over at the State Department, we’ve certainly been playing a lot of a supporting role in that effort. But we have to make sure we continue to move the dialogue forward. It’s complicated by the fact that the picture’s still emerging here. The president has said that we need a global solution, but we also need to show the world that we’re in this game for the long term.

Q. Do you think we’ll have a climate policy in place by then?

A. I hope so. I certainly hope so. I want to remain optimistic that we will.

Q. Mountaintop-removal coal mining is a very controversial issue. [Recently] your administration said that you would rigorously scrutinize mountaintop-removal permits, but you’ve approved dozens of permits already. Why not ban the practice altogether?

A. The actual rules that enable surface mining, and mountaintop mining is one type of surface mining, are Department of Interior’s rules. And, I think wisely, the Council on Environmental Quality called together all the groups who work on mountaintop-mining issues, that would mean Interior and EPA and the Corps of Engineers, and said, "OK, listen, we need to look at this practice." The assessment yielded something that I certainly agree with, and I think many people do, which is that the current state of the law and regs doesn’t allow us to just change the law and the regs to say that this process will no longer be allowable. There’s no way to do that under current law.

What we can do at EPA is commit to a couple things: rigorous scrutiny of permits to make sure that we look at potential impacts to water. And I think that there is a valid criticism that’s been leveled that the process is not open enough, that outside advocates -- whether they be environmentalists or people who are advocating for mining or maybe community members -- don’t have enough information to gauge whether or not they agree with EPA’s determinations or not. So we’ve not only said we’re going to scrutinize new permits as they come up, pull out the batch of 110 that are sitting and already waiting to be issued by the Corps and scrutinize those, but we’re going to do it with one other new improvement, which is to put all the information we have out in a database that’s publicly available, so that the public will know what concerns we have and why we have them. If we miss something, we can certainly have that discussion. If we disagree--reasonable people may be able to disagree on the science--but at least people aren’t trying to guess what EPA’s thinking as it reviews these permits.

Q. Sometimes you get the sense climate change that is the only environmental problem we’re grappling with. What do you think is the most pressing environmental concern after climate change?

A. I think it is important that we make sure the American people know that here at EPA we have an agenda that’s broader than climate change. It starts with renewing this agency’s commitment to science, to the law and transparency.

When we talk about environmental programs, I think we have to talk about air pollution still. A recent study said that as many as 60 percent of Americans live in areas of our country where we don’t meet air standards for the other criteria pollutants, even if you put CO2 and greenhouse gases on the side. That’s a pretty powerful and potent statement in the year 2009, that we still have that level of concern about air pollution. And in some areas, some urban areas and other areas, it’s much higher percentages, where the majority of the year the air is literally not safe to breathe. Climate change is a long-term threat, but things like ozone pollution and particulate pollution is much shorter and can have acute health impacts, even death. We have a huge obligation there.

And water. I think more and more Americans are very much aware of the fact that clean water is still not a given, even in this day and age, that we have too many communities that are struggling for clean drinking water. And then the next step, communities whose very economic future and recovery depend on a clean and sustainable source of water. And we don’t have answers for those communities.

We have a huge agenda on toxics, I like to say “toxic sites,” the clean-up program that many of us know as Superfund and brownfield sites. The president’s commitment to refunding through a “polluter pays” tax is music to our ears here at EPA. But then the other side of toxics, which is toxic chemicals. Many people aren’t as familiar with EPA’s role in evaluating toxic chemicals and assessing risk of chemicals. And I would like to see a robust and modernized program there as well.

Q. The EPA has been criticized for years for being notoriously slow at judging the toxicities of chemicals. What do you plan to do to speed that up?

A. We have two ideas: The first is to work within the regulatory authority we already have. That law is TSCA, the Toxic Substances Control Act, which basically requires EPA to assess new chemicals as they come on the market. Anything can be improved, but that’s not the greatest source of frustration. For many Americans the concern is the existing chemicals that were sort of grandfathered in when TSCA came to be, and new concerns about how well and how much of that chemical universe we’re assessing. And we’re right now reviewing our regulatory authority to come up with some new ideas, some fresh ideas, besides the voluntary programs that we’ve seen for the past eight years, in terms of TSCA.

Then we announced just a week ago a reworking of our risk assessment process in terms of something called IRIS [Integrated Risk Information System]. We have a huge database that’s internationally used where we put chemical toxicity information out for everyone to use in their decision-making, and we had gotten to the point where, in my belief, an overly complicated system that involved a little too much opinion from non-scientists had come to be the way that IRIS risk assessments were done. We changed that, we’ve gone back to a simpler process; we are aiming for a 23-month from start to finish process for IRIS risk assessments.

And EPA’s working now to formulate a position on potential changes to the legislation that’s already out there. TSCA’s a statute that’s been around since 1976, and it’s reasonable to believe that it might be time to look at better ways and quicker ways to protect Americans from risk of toxic chemicals in the year 2009.

Q. The green team is a diverse group, and a lot of you have been outspoken on environmental justice, an issue that’s been sidelined for many years. What would you like to see happen on the policy level to address the disproportionate impacts of pollution on low-income communities?

A. First and foremost I would like to see the fruition of the dreams of folks who have been advocating on environmental justice for a long, long time, and almost made it their life’s passion, and that’s that they have a seat at the table and a voice and that they’re listened to, that [environmental justice] is not an afterthought to be redressed later, but that in decision making, in policy making, we give consideration to make sure that those who are poor, those who are already disproportionately impacted for whatever set of reasons, aren’t being asked to accept an additional share of environmental burden because it’s easier or because they’re disenfranchised. Of course we know that oftentimes when you take poor and disproportionately impacted, that intersects with people of color. Environmental justice I think at its heart says let’s look at the science -- if you’re being impacted, it’s very likely that we can do something to help, that we can be proactive on our decision making.

The second thing I’d like to see is that we don’t just deal with the bad stuff, but as we see this new economy growing -- this green jobs, green collar, green energy, whatever euphemism we want to use -- that we get some of that good stuff going as well, so that a lot of communities who may feel separate from environmental issues suddenly have a real stake in them, because they literally make their living through green energy or through site cleanup. We’ve seen some amazing success stories in the brownfields program where you give jobs to people to help clean up sites in their own community. And you don’t just give someone a job when that happens, you build an environmentalist from the ground up. Now all of a sudden it’s an issue that they care about, it literally is their life’s work. That’s what we want to see as well.

Q. You've talked about how your job places you in a remarkable moment in history. What is it like to experience this and why is this issue so important to you on a personal level?

A. I wish I was eloquent enough to explain to people how much of a dream come true it is to be back at EPA at this time. I think if you ask any career civil servant in the building, "If you could do anything for EPA over the last eight years, what would you do?", they would say, "I’d like to bring the place back, I’d like to value the employees, I’d like to make the American people know how important the work is that we do and how serious it is that we take it" -- and I get to do that. And I worked here for 16 years before as one of those folks in the trenches. I was in New Jersey working for Gov. [Jon] Corzine, and there was no greater job, except for this one. It would have taken a great job to leave. I wish I could tell you how extraordinary it is. All I can say is that it’s worth moving the family, selling the house, getting here as soon as possible, because from the president to every single one of the employees, it’s just been an incredible experience, really an honor.

Be sure to check out video highlights from the interview.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

A historic reckoning is taking place on Coal River in West Virginia this week-and in Washington, DC on Thursday.

On June 25th, U.S. Senator Benjamin L. Cardin (D-MD), Chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Water and Wildlife Subcommittee, will hold the first bipartisan hearing in a generation to address the impact of mountaintop removal mining operations.

In the meantime, the human rights and constitutional violations of American citizens besieged by ruthless outside coal companies will be on full display to the national media and the nation-from the shocking and shameful mountaintop removal operations threatening the safety of a school and community in West Virginia, to the transformed halls of the US Congress.

On Tuesday, June 23rd, local coalfield parents and residents will be joined by legendary 88-year-old West Virginia activist Winnie Fox, 94-year-old coal mining hero and former US Congressman Ken Hechler (D-WV), the nation's foremost climatologist James Hansen, actress and long-time environmental activist Darry Hannah, and director Michael Brune of the national environmental group Rainforest Action Network, on a nonviolent march from Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West Virginia to a nearby Massey Energy mining site to call attention to the blatant disregard for the safety of the children and community.

The two sides of the Massey bridge over Coal River could not be more distinct-and a startling wake-up call to the nation.

Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, West Virginia might be the most tragic and symbolic site of American children left behind by their state government.

Forsaken by state officials and a recent WV Supreme Court decision last week, the school and its children must play amid the toxic dust of a coal silo-and soon a second one-that sits less than a football field away.

The Marsh Fork Elementary School also sits only a few football fields downslope of a 2.8 billion gallon earthen coal sludge impoundment, where Massey Energy is setting off thousands of pounds of explosives near the dam.

Every school kid in the coalfields knows Massey's reckless history with coal sludge dams.

In a haunting parallel to last December's TVA coal ash disaster, a Massey subsidiary in eastern Kentucky was responsible for the largest coal slurry spill at that point, leaking over 300 million gallons of toxic sludge into the area's waterways and aquifers.

With blasting nearby, if the 380 foot earthen dam above the Marsh Fork school broke, the children and community residents would have less than three minutes to flee.

Based in Richmond, Virginia, Massey Energy has demonstrated a merciless coveting for coal at any expense. At the 2008 4th quarter earnings call, the out-of-state company's president crowed that 2008 was the "most successful" in Massey's history, and their "very aggressive expansion plan" was executed "almost to perfection." The Virginia-based president was "especially pleased" that Massey reached an "all time record high" of $641 million in adjusted annual EBITDA.

Now laying off workers due to market demands, with 19 union-busted Appalachian mining operations valued at $2.6 billion in 2008, the Richmond company shelled out $20 million in penalties for dumping toxic mine waste into the region's waterways in 2008; Massey also paid a record $4.2 million for civil and criminal fines in the death of two coal miners in West Virginia last year.

Besides the obvious environmental tragedy of destroying over 500 American mountains and 1,200 miles of streams through massive explosives and mining waste, four other issues should be noted by the national media:

1) Mountaintop removal is a national issue, not a regional or Appalachian issue: Coal stripmined from mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia-though accounting for only 5-7% of the national coal production-is used by coal-fired plants that generate electricity for Americans across the nation, including the network and cable TV channels in NYC, the White House in Washington, DC, Disney World in Orlando, Florida, and Wrigley Field in Chicago.

2) Mountaintop removal is an international climate change issue: Over 500 massive mountains and 1.5 million acres of hardwood deciduous forests have been clear cut and blown to bits in one of our continent's most important carbon sinks; and the coal exported from mountaintop removal operations, including millions of tons to dirty coal-fired plants in China, contribute to our growing carbon dioxide emissions climate crisis.

3) Mountaintop removal is a national health care issue: When entire communities in the coalfields are unable to drink their well water or tap water, and entire areas such as Prenter, West Virginia, are afflicted with various illnesses or some form of gallbladder disease from coal slurry contaminated water, our nation must come to grips with this health care emergency. According to a recent report by the University of California in Santa Barbara, the external costs of US coal-fired plants ("harm that comes about by damages to crops and buildings as well as health implications for humans-sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter") add $268 billion annually to our nation's health care system burden.

4) Mountaintop removal is a national human rights issue: As 3.5 million pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives continue to be detonated across the West Virginia mountains every day (with a similar amount ripping across eastern Kentucky, eastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia), American citizens living under or near mountaintop removal operations have been subjected to a state of terror, including daily blasting, dangerous bombardments of fly rock, rain showers of silica dust and heavy metals, contamination of their water sources, flooding, harassment, and the massive devaluation of their properties.

In announcing the historic Senate hearings last week, on the same day that the Obama administration set forth its intent to do "all it can under existing laws and regulations to curb the most environmentally destructive impacts of mountaintop coal mining," Sen. Carden said: "Mountaintop mining is one of the most destructive practices that already has destroyed some of America's most beautiful and ecologically significant regions. Today's decision by the Obama Administration to limit the practice through a stronger review of mountaintop mining permit applications is an important step in the right direction. However, it does not halt this incredibly destructive form of mining. We must put an end to this mining method that has buried more than a thousand miles of streams."

Senator Cardin is the sponsor of S. 696, The Appalachian Restoration Act, a two-page bill that would outlaw the mining practice.

As bridge between the Congressional hearings on Thursday and the march from Marsh Fork Elementary School on Tuesday, 94-year-old former West Virginia Congressman Ken Hechler will be in the front ranks.

Hechler held the first hearing on the impact of mountaintop removal in 1971. Later that year he introduced a bill to abolished strip-mining. When the House amendment to grant federal sanctioning to mountaintop removal under the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act was introduced on July 22, 1974, Ken Hechler rose and declared:

"Mountaintop removal is the most devastating form of mining on steep slopes. Once we scalp off a mountain and the spoil runs down the mountainside and the acid runs into the water supply, there is no way to check it. This is not only esthetically bad as anyone can tell who flies over the State of West Virginia or any place where the mountaintops are scraped off, but also it is devastating to those people who live below the mountain. Some of the worst effects of strip mining in Kentucky, West Virginia, and other mountainous areas result from mountaintop removal. McDowell County in WV, which has mined more coal than any other county in the Nation, is getting ready right now to strip mine off four or five mountaintops. They are displacing families and moving them out of those areas because everybody down slope from where there is mountaintop mining is threatened. I certainly hope that all the compromises that have been accepted by the committee, offered by industry in the committee, that now we do not compromise what little is left of this bill by amendments such as this."

Let's hope Hechler's voice-and those of the children and other coalfield residents in Coal River Valley, and around Appalachia-will be heard this time.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Four daring protestors accomplished something today that no high ranking member in the Obama administration involved in the recent mountaintop removal mining policy decisions has ever bothered to do: These four American patriots made an actual visit to a mountaintop removal site.

They also went beyond the call of duty.

Scaling a towering 20-story dragline (those behemoth stripmining machines that could rip up a Manhattan block in a New York minute) and then unfolding a 15 x 150 foot banner at the Twilight mountaintop removal strip mine in Boone County, West Virginia, they also unveiled a simple message on how the EPA, the Department of Interior and the Council on Environmental Quality can best enforce the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws:

JUST STOP MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL.

The action launches a dramatic weeklong series of protests at mountaintop removal sites in the West Virginia coalfields that will culminate on June 23rd with a special action in the Coal River Valley area with local coalfield residents, NASA climate scientist James Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah, and 94-year-old former US Representative Ken Hechler, and Rainforest Action Action executive director Michael Brune, among many others.

"It's way past time for civil disobedience to stop mountaintop removal and move quickly toward clean, renewable energy sources," said Judy Bonds, Goldman Environmental Prize winner and co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch of West Virginia. "For over a century, Appalachian communities have been crushed, flooded, and poisoned as a result of the country's dangerous and outdated reliance on coal. How could the country care so little about our American mountains, our culture and our lives?"

The four protesters were arrested, along with ten other on-the-ground protestors at the Massey mining site, who unfurled their own 20x40 foot banner: Stop Mountaintop Removal: Clean Energy Now. The group is expected to be arraigned early this afternoon at Boone County Jail in Madison, West VA.

Aerial photos of the Massey Energy-owned Twilight mountaintop removal mine can be seen here.

During the day, updates and photos on today's action will be posted here.

Equipped with satellite phones and web cameras, the protestors plan to stay on the enormous dragline until they are arrested. Another group of protestors on the ground have already been reached by the police.

"I've written letters, attended hearings and called my congressman, so far they have done nothing to stop the disastrous and unnecessary practice of mountaintop removal," said Charles Suggs, a 25-year old of Rock Creek, WV, one of today's participants. "It has come to the point when we must take direct action to abolish this practice that is immorally robbing Appalachian communities of their culture, their health and their future."

Despite last week's best-laid-plans by the Obama administration to provide stronger reviews of mountaintop removal permits under current laws--notwithstanding the 42 out of the 48 mining permits cleared by the EPA last month--the protest today draws attention to the reality that over 3.5 million pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives are being detonated DAILY in mountaintop removal operations across the West Virginia mountains alone, while hundreds of mountaintop removal permits now stand ready to be reviewed and cleared.

In last week's announcement, CEQ chief Nancy Sutley declared that the Obama administration would do "all it can under existing laws and regulations to curb the most environmentally destructive impacts of mountaintop coal mining."

Read that line again: "Curb the most environmentally destructive impacts of mountaintop coal mining." 

If Sutley joined the protestors at the Twilight site or any mountaintop removal operation, she would witness firsthand, as well, that even the LEAST "environmentally destructive impacts of mountaintop removal" REQUIRE massive clear cutting of our nation's most diverse and oldest deciduous forests on the continent, setting ANFO explosives and blasting the mountains to bits, showering the neighboring communities with silica dust and dangerous fly rock, and then dumping the mine waste and heavy metals into the valleys and streams and watersheds.

Video updates of today's action will also be posted here.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

After the Massey Energy coal mining company lost a $50 million verdict to a competitor, CEO Don Blankenship spent $3 million electing a friendly judge to West Virginia's Supreme Court of Appeals who went on to cast the deciding vote in a case that overturned the verdict.

But yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court handed a setback to Massey, a company notorious for its reliance on destructive mountaintop removal mining throughout Central Appalachia, as well as other companies that use their financial clout to influence the judiciary, with a ruling that elected judges must recuse themselves from cases involving big campaign contributors.

The case goes all the way back to 1998, when Hugh Caperton of West Virginia's Harman Mining Corp. sued a Massey affiliate for fraud. Four years later, a lower court awarded Caperton $50 million in damages.

Massey appealed to West Virginia's high court -- and in an effort to ensure a ruling favorable to the company Blankenship contributed $3 million to the campaign of Brent Benjamin, who successfully challenged incumbent Justice Warren McGraw in 2004.

Caperton's attorneys asked Benjamin -- who is now the court's chief justice -- to recuse himself from the case, but he declined. The court went on to rule in Massey's favor twice by a 3-2 vote, with Benjamin casting the deciding vote both times.

Caperton's legal team appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which yesterday in a 5-4 decision ruled that Benjamin should have stepped aside. Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the court:

"Just as no man is allowed to be a judge in his own cause, similar fears of bias can arise when -- without the consent of the other parties -- a man chooses the judge in his own cause."

Joining Kennedy in the ruling were Justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and John Paul Stevens. In dissent signed by fellow conservatives Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that the ruling would damage public confidence in the judiciary:

The Court's new "rule" provides no guidance to judges and litigants about when recusal will be constitutionally required. This will inevitably lead to an increase in allegations that judges are biased, however groundless those charges may be. The end result will do far more to erode public confidence in judicial impartiality than an isolated failure to recuse in a particular case.

The case now returns to the West Virginia courts. Adding in the interest, the judgment in the original case has now grown to over $82 million.

"At its core, the Caperton case was about the inherent conflict of interest when our elected officials depend on or are aided by large campaign contributions and excessive spending in the electoral process," said Nick Nyhart, president of Public Campaign, a nonprofit that promotes public financing of elections. "Americans know that campaign contributions from wealthy special interests impact the policy decisions made by Congress on matters that affect the life and well being of all of us."

Massey's stock was down 6% in yesterday afternoon's trading on the New York Stock Exchange, while other coal company stocks were down between 2 and 4%, Reuters reports.

The high court's ruling is the latest in a series of recent setbacks for Richmond, Va.-based Massey. Last month Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee resigned from Massey's board under pressure from activists who argued that his promotion of sustainable energy was incompatible with Massey's reliance on mountaintop removal mining.

And earlier this year, Santa Clara University in California divested its holdings in Massey because of the company's record of environmental destructiveness. The company has also been the target of nonviolent protests over its environmentally destructive business practices.

(A version of this story originally appeared at Facing South.)

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

A proposal to mine uranium in south-central Virginia advanced this week when a key state body approved a study of the matter. The targeted site is in Virginia's Pittsylvania County just north of the city of Danville and close to the border with North Carolina's Rockingham and Caswell counties.

A subcommittee of the Virginia Commission on Coal and Energy OK'd the study yesterday after deciding on exactly what issues should be examined, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reports:

Some opponents asked the panel to vote against the study, hoping that would kill the mining proposal.

But state Sen. John Watkins, R-Powhatan, a member of the subcommittee, said approval of the study did not mean approval of mining in Pittsylvania.

"That decision is a long way down the road," Watkins said.

The panel will look at mining's effects on people's health and ecosystems, identify pollution issues and review current mining regulations. But it denied a request by Del. Watkins M. Abbitt Jr. (I-Appomattox) to consider how water pollution specifically might be prevented. The subcommittee's chair, Del. Lee R. Ware Jr. (R-Powhatan) argued that the study already included that issue.

The study, which will be conducted by the U.S. National Research Council, is expected to cost $1.5 million and last about 18 months. It remains unclear how the work will be funded, according to the paper.

As Facing South reported previously, Virginia has banned uranium mining for the past 25 years. Virginia Uranium -- a privately-held company formed several years ago by the owners of the land where the uranium was found -- has been pressing to get the ban lifted. To that end, Virginia Uranium contributed almost $30,000 to state lawmakers last year alone.

The Pittsylvania County site is believed to hold the largest undeveloped uranium deposit in the United States and the seventh-largest in the world. It holds an estimated 60,000 tons -- enough uranium to power all the commercial nuclear plants in the country for about two years. The company estimates its value at about $10 billion.

While the company has maintained that the uranium could be mined safety, uranium mining has a history of causing serious environmental health problems, having been linked to chromosome abnormalities, birth defects and cancer in communities from Texas to Germany.

Uranium mining also poses a serious threat to drinking water. In 1979, for example, a dam holding uranium mining waste at a New Mexico facility owned by the Virginia-based United Nuclear Corp. burst, sending more than 1,100 tons of toxic discards and 90 million gallons of contaminated water into the Rio Puerco. Once an important drinking water source for nearby Navajo communities, the river remains dangerously contaminated today.

Officials in Virginia Beach are among those opposing the uranium mining plans. They have noted that a tropical storm or hurricane could breach the mine's waste impoundment and pollute downstream water bodies including Lake Gaston, the city's drinking-water source.

(This story originally appeared at Facing South)

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Two senators push to ramp up nuclear energy

Nuclear companies face reactor design problems, ethics questions

In early April, the excellent investigative journalism show NOW on PBS ran an episode called "Can Coal be Earth-Friendly?"

In conjunction with the episode, NOW hosted an online debate between me and Joe Lucas, spokesflack for the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE). We were given a series of five questions. We each answered the questions, and were each given an opportunity to rebut the other's answers.

When I received Lucas's answers, I responded to them. When he received mine, he ... ran off like a pansy. I don't think he likes arguing with people who know what they're talking about and have more than a 30 second soundbite with which to respond.

The debate is reprinted below, with NOW's kind permission.

-----

Joe Lucas: Of course there is. Our opponents like to claim that we invented the term, when in fact clean coal (which is short for clean coal technology) has been an accepted term-of-art for several decades now.

The facts are simple. To date, we have used advanced emissions control technologies (i.e. clean coal technologies) to reduce emissions currently regulated under federal clean air act laws. Sulfur dioxide (SO2), nitrogen oxides (NOx) and other emissions have been dramatically reduced over the past several decades. This type of reduction didn't just happen—especially given that our use of coal for generating electricity nearly tripled during this same period. It happened because of the use of technologies.

And like other technologies, clean coal technologies are truly evolutionary. Going forward, this same type of technological innovation will lead to reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.

David Roberts: No. When coal is mined, it destroys the land and surrounding communities. When coal is washed, it produces millions of tons a year of toxic, water-polluting slurry. When coal is burned, it produces millions of tons a year of toxic ash and periodic disasters like the December spill in Tennessee. Coal combustion produces mercury and particulate pollution that leads to some 24,000 premature deaths a year and billions in healthcare costs, with pregnant mothers and young children particularly at risk.

All these problems would go unaddressed by so-called "clean coal," which would reduce just one pollutant, carbon dioxide. And even that promise is a phantom: Not a single commercial coal power plant in America captures or otherwise prevents CO2 emissions.

"Clean coal" is a PR gimmick.

David Roberts' Rebuttal: Mr. Lucas is right about one thing: reductions in conventional air pollutants from coal plants "didn't just happen." They were forced on the industry by federal law. The industry fought those laws tooth and nail for years and has been fined and sued hundreds of times for breaking them. Hardly something to boast about.

Incidentally, those air pollutants scrubbed out of smoke stacks? They end up in toxic coal ash waste—the kind that flooded Kingston, Tennessee last December. Now the industry's fighting efforts to regulate waste ash. And fighting off efforts to clean up its Appalachia-destroying mining operations.

For a "clean" industry, Big Coal sure does seem averse to getting cleaner.

Joe Lucas: Coal is a fuel that is uniquely positioned to meet the needs for base load (constant, steady, on-demand) power. It is domestically abundant—we have more energy in the form of coal than the Middle East has oil. It is an affordable fuel and is getting cleaner everyday.

We support the use of all domestic fuels to meet America's growing energy needs. However, energy sources are more likely to be compliments to one another than competitors. Take wind and solar for example. They do not displace coal or other base load fuels because wind and solar are intermittent power sources - only producing electricity under certain optimum environmental conditions. To add these intermittent energy resources to the transmission grid, they have to be backed-up with a non-intermittent resource—like coal. What's more, it would take a one-mile band of windmills spanning across the entire equator (around 25,000 miles) just to generate enough power to meet 20% of America's electricity needs.

David Roberts: Yes. Putting aside the health and environmental effects above, coal is increasingly uneconomic. For one thing, a whole array of new studies suggests that U.S. coal reserves could begin declining within 20 years (not quite the "300 year supply" the industry touts).

As this fact and the inevitability of greenhouse-pollution restrictions become more widely understood, new coal plants are being exposed as risky and unsound investments, which is why nearly 100 proposed plants have been canceled in the past two years. States dependent on coal are already seeing their electrical rates skyrocket, and coal utilities are requesting further rate hikes.

Despite coal industry claims, U.S. coal power is neither "abundant" nor "cheap." It's a sinking ship.

David Roberts' Rebuttal: Here's a detailed plan to meet America's energy needs without new coal plants, using a combination of efficiency and clean renewable power. Here's another, another, another, another, and more. Just last week the Department of Interior released a study showing that offshore wind alone could satisfy U.S. electricity needs.

The pressure to build new coal plants is political—a result of the $40 million PR campaign Mr. Lucas is running—not technological.

The message that there's "no alternative" to coal's enormous health and environmental costs is fear mongering. It's a vote against American ingenuity and resourcefulness.

Joe Lucas: We support a mandatory federal carbon management program. In order for such a program to achieve its goals, it must 1) achieve emissions reductions, 2) promote greater energy independence by maintaining fuel diversity, and 3) ensure that businesses and families are not paying higher than necessary energy costs.

In that regard, technology is the key. Recently, more and more policy makers have adopted the notion that a federal climate policy necessitates developing and deploying carbon capture and storage technologies as the foundation for such a policy. President Obama has talked about this as a part of his strategy. Other distinguished academic, governmental, and non-governmental organizations have indicated that CCS (carbon capture and storage) technology is essential to meeting the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions on a global scale.

David Roberts: Asked whether human greenhouse gas emissions are driving climate change, coal pitchman Joe Lucas famously said, "I don't know. I'm not a scientist." Happily, non-scientists can use Google to find out what scientists think, and they overwhelmingly agree: climate change is urgent and potentially catastrophic. In the face of this kind of problem, "containing" coal's emissions—which equal those of the entire transportation sector—is unambitious at best. Those emissions need to be phased out, as quickly as possible.

It's simple: the industry should be forbidden from building new coal plants unless they meet stringent CO2 emissions standards. And over time, all existing coal plants should be required to meet those standards as well, or shut down. If coal can compete in a carbon-constrained world, good. If not, it should move out of the way for solutions that can.

David Roberts' Rebuttal: Big Coal sure has a funny way of "supporting" a plan to reduce climate pollution. It has sponsored, with its allies in Big Oil, a decades-long effort to confuse and deceive the public about global warming. It is still funding groups and politicians that work to block mandatory pollution reductions. Mr. Lucas even linked to such a politician in his response!

With public pressure building, the industry has shifted from battling to co-opting energy/climate legislation, attempting to transform it into a corporate welfare slush fund. An easy tip for spotting subsidy seekers: they repeat the word "technology" a lot! (As Mr. Lucas does several times.)

David Roberts: Put it this way: there is no other way forward for the U.S. coal industry. Coal is effectively made of carbon, so there's no way to use it without producing millions of tons of CO2. The best case scenario for the industry, then, is to be able to capture the stuff and bury it back underground.

But despite the misleading PR from industry, experts agree that CCS is at least 10-15 years out and will be extremely expensive when it finally arrives. Sequestration is arguably important for the developing world, and worth researching for that reason, but it's unlikely to save the U.S. coal industry.

David Roberts' Rebuttal: CCS may well be needed for meeting global carbon reduction targets, though there is considerable debate on that point. (It's a genuine dilemma what to do about the spread of dirty coal in China and India.) But it is crystal clear that America can meet its carbon-reduction goals without CCS.

More to the point: Mr. Lucas's group is fronting an effort to smuggle dirty coal plants into the U.S. under the 10-15-years-off promise of CCS. The industry calls such plants "CCS-ready," much like my driveway is Ferrari-ready.

Watch for the shell game.

Joe Lucas: Recently, the President said that if the cost of a federal carbon management program were too high, people wouldn't do it. Similarly, former British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that if you make a country choose between growing their economy or reducing emissions—they'll choose their economy every time. So we need to find a solution that allows us to have both—and President Obama and other policy makers realize that.

By deploying CCS technology we can preserve access to affordable energy. This protects and hopefully creates jobs in the manufacturing sector and helps families balance household budgets. Additionally, a study done with several of the nation's leading industrial unions showed that deploying CCS technologies will create over one million job years—and as one of the union representatives said in describing these jobs, these are jobs that pay enough so that you can afford to raise a family.

So investing in clean coal technologies for carbon capture and storage is clearly a part of the President's energy goals. Doing so meets his three primary objectives of 1) creating jobs, 2) promoting greater energy independence, and 3) increasing environmental protection.

David Roberts: Obama supports "clean coal" for a simple reason: coal-state legislators wield a great deal of power in Congress. No national politician can afford to directly confront the network of industry lobby groups and legislators that defends coal's interests.

Obama will direct considerable federal money toward research and deployment for CCS; it's part of the price he has to pay to bring coal-state legislators on board for serious climate change legislation.

The key issue is whether Obama will allow the coal industry to build new dirty coal plants—plants without CCS. He said on the campaign trail that he will not. We'll see if he keeps that promise.

David Roberts' Rebuttal: Mr. Lucas's first paragraph is absolutely correct, but the second is a head-smacking non sequitur. If we want the transition to a clean, green economy to produce jobs and prosperity, why would we focus on the most costly path forward?

International consulting firm McKinsey & Co. has produced the definitive cost curve comparing various emission reduction strategies. CCS is at the far right—among the two or three most expensive out of dozens of alternatives. The smart strategy is to focus on those at the left, the ones that save rather than cost money. (They also generate more jobs.) That's Economics 101!

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?

Mountaintop, removed. Near Rawl, West Virginia.Courtesy of ILoveMountains.orgMaria Gunnoe.Tom DusenberyWest Virginian Maria Gunnoe won a prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize this week for her work fighting the devastating practice of mountaintop removal mining. It's hard to think of someone more deserving of the prize, which includes a $150,000 award. Gunnoe, 40, has seen her family's ancestral home flooded seven times since coal-mining companies built two toxic-waste ponds above the Boone County property. Mine waste poisoned her well and drinking water. After she began working against coal companies in 2004, "wanted" posters of Gunnoe appeared in local convenience stores, and her daughter's dog was shot.

Despite these obstacles, Gunnoe, a member of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, has kept up the fight, organizing community members and working successfully for the closure of several mines and for tighter regulations on those that remain open. (Read Jeff Biggers' profile and check out a Grist photo series for more.)

Reached by phone yesterday, Gunnoe sounded alternately energized, calmly optimistic, and as ticked off as ever about what's happening to her homeland. Here are the highlights of our conversation.

Q. First off, congratulations. How do you expect the prize to change your work and how you're able to get your message out?

A. When people find out that mountains are blown up because of their electricity consumption, they tend not to like that. So the awareness is as important, if not more important, than the money.

Q. And what about the $150,000?

A. By the time I pay taxes and pay to have water run into my house, I might have enough left to go grocery shopping. My water is polluted with selenium and other things so I can't use the water that comes into my house right now. We have to buy water in gallon jugs. In order to get city water access I have to get it run in about a half mile from any direction. They want $31,000 to make that happen.

We'll put it this way: the coal industry destroyed our property. They destroyed our water and our access bridges, so just getting access and healthier water into our property could take much of that money. And $150,000 really isn't that much when you're talking about fixing the destruction of the coal industry.

Q. Was there a defining point for you in turning from a citizen into a mountaintop removal activist and leader? How did that happen?

A. It had more to do with the fact that I'm a mother than anything else. I started looking into what my children's future was going to look like, and it didn't look good. The best thing I can do for my children is to educate them and to see to it that they have a healthy world to bring their grandchildren into. And it's not that way right now.

Gunnoe's West Virginia home.Tom DusenberyQ. You're the third woman from West Virginia to win the Goldman Prize. What is it about this part of the country that produces so many tough-as-nails women who fight against mountaintop removal from their own doorsteps?

A. Well, we're fierce mothers. That's the only way I know to explain it. Appalachian women are very concerned about the wellbeing of their children, their grandchildren, and their great grandchildren, because the things that sustain life and culture in Appalachia are being destroyed. The water, air, land, the plant life—everything.

Q. So many people who use that electricity don't live in Appalachia, and get their water from somewhere else. How do you show them the full consequences of the way coal is mined?

A. One of the best ways is to ask them to come to Appalachia and see for themselves. Because you can't fully explain mountaintop removal to people. They need to experience mountaintop removal. It is so big that it's almost like the human mind doesn't have the capacity to absorb the enormity of it.

Another way is to go to iLoveMountains.org. Put in your zip code and it will tell you exactly what mountain was leveled to power your home. It will tell you where the coal comes from that powers your home.

Q. What's the feeling among people on the ground about how the Obama administration will handle mountaintop removal and coal mining?

A. On the ground, there's not much happening. Everything that's happening is on paper. On the ground, mountains are being blown up. If anything, it's exacerbating things by making mining companies move faster. They're afraid they're going be stopped, so they're getting what they can while they can.

Q. Has Obama's Office of Surface Mining signaled that it's going to start doing things differently on these issues?

A. They've not sent clear signals. They're reviewing permits, but there's nothing coming from that. It's better than the Bush admin where they just rubber-stamped permits. The Obama administration has made steps toward reviewing these permits for environmental impact, but there's nothing really happening. The people who live in these communities expect an all-out ban on mountaintop removal coal mining, and we won't give one inch until we get it.

Q. I heard you were meeting with senators this week. Were you able to say that to them or to anyone from the administration?

A. I was able to say that to my senators, and they very much disagree. They think we can have some sort of compromise on this and everybody can come to an agreement of how to do mountaintop removal more "environmentally consciously." But you cannot blow up a mountain and be environmentally conscious. There is no building that mountain back.

Q. What do you make of reports that Obama wants to appoint Glenda Owens, a Bush mountaintop removal architect, to lead the Office of Surface Mining?

A. I have an idea: let's put somebody in charge of the Office of Surface Mining who lives where I live, and let them help set these laws. The people who are running the federal and state regulatory agencies are never the people who are living with the impacts of mountaintop removal. It's almost like they turn a blind eye to it. They don't want to know.

Q. Are enough people in West Virginia and Appalachia waking up to the full cost of mountaintop removal to create real change?

A. Absolutely, especially with the exacerbated mining they're doing now -- they're moving at a pace beyond anything I've ever seen. People are definitely waking up to it, because they're waking up every single morning and every evening with blasting near their homes. Their homes are being shaken off their foundations. Their air is laden with silica dust from the blasting.

And people across the world are waking up to it, too. People are beginning to connect their consumption with the demise of the Appalachian people. And they don't like it.

Q. Anything else?

A. The Appalachian people have been promised prosperity through coal for the last 125 years. And we're poorer now, because we used to be rich in the abundance of the land, and now that's been taken away. And there are fewer jobs than there have ever been here. I think it's time to keep that promise of prosperity in the form of green jobs, which have a real promise for the future. That's the only way we're going to pull ourselves out of this slop.

Related Links:

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common?