Coal | Grist

Fasts, Sit-Ins, Die-Ins, Protests for Climate Justice Today

Prologue to Copenhagen 0
Posted 13 hours, 8 minutes ago
Vinod Khosla Nonesense 0
Posted 18 hours, 57 minutes ago
Pet Poop, "Clean" Coal, and Old Mattresses

Ask Umbra on ditching dirty things 5
Posted 1 day, 18 hours ago Should you flush Fido's feces? Can coal ever really be clean? And is there any way to recycle an old mattress? Umbra advises.
Novels, Exposes, Histories, Poems, Calls to Action!

Climate Hope: Inspiring 2009 Books for Clean Energy 0
Posted 2 days, 10 hours ago
Believe it or not, your room still isn't the most toxic thing

What Do Coal and Dirty Dorm Rooms Have in Common? 0
Posted 5 days, 15 hours ago
Don't Miss Climate Change Ground Zero Showdown

Copenhagen, U.S.A. December 7 2
Posted 1 week ago On Dec. 7, the opening day of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Americans from around the country will converge for a historic protest at climate change ground zero for our nation -- the Appalachian coalfields.
no coal, doctors' orders!

Toward a medically defensible energy policy 0
Posted 1 week ago
Time to Speak Out Against the Biggest Polluters 0
Posted 1 week, 6 days ago
Where's the Love?

Why won’t Lisa Jackson/Nancy Sutley visit a mountaintop removal site? 0
Posted 1 week, 6 days ago
Cleaning up after the enemy of the human race

Is “we’re going to burn the coal anyway” an argument for carbon sequestration? 40
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago A frequent argument one hears in favor of a heavy focus on carbon sequestration goes like this: fossil fuels are fantastic energy carriers, dense, portable, and cheap. People will burn them up no matter what. So we might as well figure out a way to make them low-carbon by sequestering their emissions. It's a way to buy time as we figure out other clean energy options. It's a seductive argument -- it sounds easier to convince people to clean up what they're already doing than to persuade them to do something entirely different. But I don't think it holds up under scrutiny.
Fourteen Democratic senators stick up for coal 6
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago Thursday, 14 Democratic senators affirmed their allegiance to the profits of polluting industry at the expense of the health and jobs of their constituents. In a letter to Senate leaders, a bloc of senators with powerful coal interests in their states called for "fair emissions allowances in climate change legislation." Their definition of "fair," unfortunately, turns out to be full taxpayer subsidies for global warming polluters.
Child Labor, Coal Ash, Coal Slurry

Big Coal and child victims 0
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago Nov. 13 marks the 100th anniversary of the Cherry Mine Disaster in Illinois, when an estimated 259 coal miners lost their lives to fire and the buildup of "black damp" or toxic gases. While we take time to reflect on the heroic sacrifices of coal miners and their families this week, the Cherry Mine Disaster remains a haunting reminder of the secret legacy of child labor in our coal mines -- and its unconscionable use today.
Rally at Penn State: Students Taking Lead on Clean Energy 0
Posted 2 weeks, 5 days ago
Lawsuit accuses Virginia power company of poisoning Dominican community with toxic coal ash 0
Posted 2 weeks, 6 days ago A civil lawsuit in state court in Delaware charges AES Corp. -- one of the world's largest power companies -- with illegally dumping 160 million pounds of toxic coal ash waste onto beaches in the Caribbean nation of the Dominican Republic, leading to serious health problems for nearby residents.
country stars turn coal into platinum

Coal Country CD benefits anti-mountaintop removal groups 0
Posted 2 weeks, 6 days ago As a companion CD to the provocative new film, Coal Country, the wildly eclectic Coal Country Music CD hits the stores today with a blockbuster list of Nashville's alt-country scene like John Prine, Kathy Mattea, Jason and the Scorchers, folk and bluegrass legends Ralph Stanley, Jean Ritchie, Tom T. Hall and Gillian Welch, rockers like Natalie Merchant and Bonnie Raitt, and a few other surprises -- as in, Grammy Award-klezmer band The Klezmatics and their beautiful rendition of Woody Guthrie's "Heaven."
Memo to North Dakota

To unlock wind power, put a price on carbon 7
Posted 3 weeks, 2 days ago Why does wind power account for just 2% of North Dakota's electricity generation - barely matching wind's national share? One obvious reason is lack of transmission capability to reach load centers. But another is the extraordinary cheapness of coal.
Another coal plant bites the dust 4
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago Minnesota and South Dakota residents stopped a coal-fired power plant project and prevented about 4.7 million tons of CO2, or the equivalent of the pollution from roughly 670,000 cars, from entering the atmosphere every year.
Coal River Mountain: destruction stops here

Blowing up our clean energy future 1
Posted 3 weeks, 5 days ago Right now, Coal River Mountain represents the best and worst our country has to offer. It is one of the most dangerous examples of blasting for dirty coal and one of the most profound examples of hope that exist in our country. It is a crossroads.
tallying toxic threats

Congressional watchdog issues update on coal ash regulation efforts 0
Posted 3 weeks, 5 days ago The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency still does not know the exact number of coal ash dumps at the nation's power plants, but it's moving ahead with plans to regulate them.
back to the future, as plunder of Appalachia continues

Interior will consider mountaintop removal rule in 2011? 0
Posted 4 weeks ago While anti-mountaintop removal protests spread across the nation, a legal representative for the Department of Interior filed the DOI's intention to consider a revision of the blatant Bush-era hijacking of the 25-year-old stream buffer zone rule, which was intended to stop mine waste from being dumped within a 100 feet of streams ... in 2011.