It’s Getting Hot In Here

Co-authored by Alex Tinker and Jenny Bedell-Stiles

West Virginia, Thursday, March 20^th: “We could be investing in renewable sources of energy, and in clean coal technology, and creating up to 5 million new green jobs in the bargain, including new clean coal jobs.”

Presidential candidate Barack Obama’s words yesterday were as hard to swallow as the sulfur dioxide rich output of dirty coal-fired power plants. The clean coal mythology must be stopped. Coal isn’t clean, it isn’t green and it has no place in the renewable-energy future we must rapidly make into a renewable-energy present if we are to avoid the worst-case scenarios of global warming.

Today, Friday March 21^st, he made no mention of this fuel to thousands in Portland, Oregon. He talked about the clean energy revolution. He gave an anti-nuke shout out (to our aging hippies). He touched on cap and trade. He even talked about green jobs revitalizing our economy.

There was no mention of deriving green jobs from clean coal. Sure, it’s common (and savvy) for our political leaders to alter their message by location. But we, the climate positive movement, are a united and connected force and we’re listening to the differences in message Barack is sending us. While not contradictory, he’s telling folks from each region what we want to hear.

This morning, Barack said that as president, he would tell the American people what we need to hear, and not just what we want to hear. Barack, as the next president of the United States, you need to start telling us that coal must be weaned from our energy generation sources.

Coal has a powerful lobby in Washington, and there are important general election states with substantial coal industries. The climate movement needs to think long and hard about what would become of all those coal families if we got our coal moratorium.

Articulating the vision of an inclusive green economy to the people who stand to lose the most from the necessary changes is critical to the success of this movement. Articulating to the new President in 2009 our firm demand for aggressive action to tackle climate change is critical to the survival of the human race.

Tell the Obama campaign what renewable energy really is.