Dispatches from the Youth Climate Movement
Speaking with reporters at a renewable energy conference in Nevada, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid announced his opposition to the construction of any new coal-fired power plants worldwide. Says Reid:
There’s not a coal-fired plant in America that’s clean. They’re all dirty.
For more information about the many recent victories leading towards a moratorium on coal, check here.
Billy Parish is Co-Founder and Coordinator of the Energy Action Coalition. Billy has taken four years off from Yale, where he was co-chair of the Yale Student Environmental Coalition and was majoring in Ethics, Politics & Economics. Billy was a 2004 Brower Youth Award Winner, 2005 Rolling Stone magazine "Climate Hero," Mother Jones magazine's 2006 "Student Activist of the Year," and was recently named a "Fellow" by Ashoka, the global association of the world's leading social entrepreneurs. A co-author of the report "New Energy for Campuses," a guide for colleges and universities on how to cost-effectively cut their greenhouse gas emissions, Billy works to train students and equip them with the tools they need to implement local climate solutions. A native of New York City, Billy now works out of the Washington D.C. office of the Energy Action Coalition.
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This is great news. The best part is that his statements were not qualified with any type of wiggle room for ‘clean coal’ IGCC power plants with carbon sequestration. Now is the time when we need to be pushing HARD on politicians to enact an unqualified moratorium on new coal-fired power plants. That is the biggest thing we can achieve to stem the climate crisis.
This is great! We can’t be building new coal plants and we have got to be phasing out the coal plants that already exist through using less energy and building renewables. The state I’m living in, WV, will see more death and destruction if we continue to use and mine coal as we’re doing. We’ve got to stop this and ban strip mining as well so the only coal mined is through (safer) deep mining.
I hope that more Democrats get on board, there is a huge political vaccuum that could be a position of power for the party if more powerful Democrats come out against coal and towards social justice.
While I think Reid IS making some great, strong stands against coal - he does in fact leave the “wiggle room” for “clean coal” and carbon capture. Maybe his position has changed in the past few weeks, but more likely this article just didn’t reflect previous statements he’s made. Check out the quote below:
“Because I believe that developing renewable energy in Nevada is far preferable to coal for the sake of our economy, public health and the environment, I will use every means at my disposal to prevent the construction of new coal-fired power plants in Nevada that do not capture and permanently store greenhouse gas emissions,” Reid wrote.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070727/pl_nm/utilities_reid_power_dc
That said - I think Reid has made some of the biggest steps by any politician on these issues. He seems to be speaking more urgently about climate concerns, and puts efficiency and renewables at the forefront, and “clean coal” (or the myth of) further back.
I think a lot of why politicians are still leaving the “clean coal” rhetoric in their platforms is simply that it’s not seen as a reasonable, mainstream position yet. I’d bet money many of them (the Reid’s, the Crist’s, the Edwards’ etc) are just trying to not alienate moderate positions, or step so far ahead of their peers that they have the coal industry attacking them from all sides. That’s why it’s up to US to make sure that the “Clean Coal” myth is fully understood as the unrealistic, problematic, fabricated idea that it is.
Check out these two great recent posts on Grist about the problems of “Clean coal” - from an economic standpoint largely.
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/8/17/152348/339
http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2007/8/19/155322/893
-Matt