Recently a couple of articles about Hillary and Obama’s positions on clean coal have been hitting the media.
A couple of days ago, Reuters did one on their support of “clean coal” while staying away from the topic of global warming.
“In a bid to draw voters ahead of Democratic primaries in West Virginia on Tuesday and Kentucky on May 20, both candidates are playing up the ascendant role of commercially untested and so far economically nonviable ways of converting America’s plentiful coal supplies into electricity without spewing massive quantities of heat-trapping greenhouse gases.
“We need some big investments right now in figuring out how to capture and store carbon dioxide from coal,” Clinton told a rally in the rural town of Clear Fork on Monday.”
Obama for his part has been including statements about his support of clean coal in all his campaign lit being distributed in Kentucky.
“Not to be outdone, Obama’s campaign has distributed flyers in Kentucky stating that “Barack Obama believes in clean Kentucky coal.” The flyers show a picture of giant barges carrying coal down the Ohio River.”
Both West Virginia and Kentucky are swing states. Both are also coal states. Southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky represent areas most ravaged by mountaintop removal (a brutal mining technique to extract “clean coal”).
I guess the topic is too hot for Dems to touch while campaigning in Appalachia and other coal states.
In a Financial TImes article today, Andrew Ward wrote about how both candidates are treading carefully around the coal dispute in Appalachia.
To me, it doesn’t seem like they are treading carefully around anything. By supporting “clean coal” they are taking a stand with the industry’s (and some weak-willed big environmental groups) false solution to carbon emissions.
This article did talk to West Virginia residents that are fighting coal extraction (i.e. mountaintop removal) tooth and nail. Maria Gunnoe, for instance, has been directly impacted by the backlash from Big Coal:
“When Maria Gunnoe started campaigning against open-cast mining on the mountains above her West Virginia home in 2003, she could not have imagined the ordeal that would follow. Over the past five years, her car brake lights have been vandalised, sand has been poured into her petrol tank and two of her dogs have been shot dead. The intimidation appeared aimed at silencing Ms Gunnoe’s criticism of a controversial form of mining that involves blowing up mountaintops to reach coal.”
All pandering aside, there is no such thing as clean coal as long as people’s water is poisoned by coal slurry, as long as floods created by mining wreck homes, as long as lakes of sludge sit next to schools, as long as mountains are bombed and as long as the coal industry targets it’s critics in the communities of Appalachia.
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Scott, would love your input on my post, Carbon Capture: Solution or Scam?. I spent a good bit of time on the analysis.
Which is the greater injustice: entrenched global poverty and inequality, or mountaintop removal and its community impacts? How you answer this question may shape your opinion on CCS.
CCS raises important questions about justice. The environmental justice movement fervently opposes CCS because of the very real injustices of coal mining, mountaintop removal, and the associated impacts upon communities. Groups and communities battling the impacts of coal extraction are understandably skeptical, and often outright opposed, to any new technology that uses coal.
CCS is interpreted differently by those who focus on the injustices of global poverty and inequality. Jeffrey Sachs, for example, is a major supporter of CCS. This technology is seen as a potential way for developing countries to retain access to affordable electricity to lift their populations out of entrenched poverty. China, for example, has brought hundreds of millions of its citizens out of poverty with coal-powered development just in the last few decades.
One of the greatest sources of passion and dedication among today’s youth climate movement is its commitment to justice. “Clean and just energy future” – this has become our vision and rallying cry. But what is a just energy future? Which injustices are we addressing? How do we get there, and which of the many injustices do we tackle first? If you believe that global poverty is as great (or greater) of an injustice as mountaintop removal, are you justified in supporting CCS?
Exporting technology to China to solve all their problems sounds a lot like the neo-conservative argument that exporting U.S. style democracy will somehow end all the problems that have existed in the Middle East for centuries.
I don’t buy this liberal capitalist idea that exporting western technology is what will save the Global South. It never has. Honestly, I feel like it’s a mechanism to make vast amounts of profits for the manufacturers of the technology and it doesn’t change that much. At the beginning of the last century John D. Rockefeller gave away free oil lamps to China in the name of development and progress, and then sold them the oil. He made millions, the Chinese remained underdeveloped.
Technological solutions won’t end poverty, just like privatization won’t. So now, millions are Chinese are out of extreme poverty and work in sweatshops powered by coal power. Is that a better existence than living without lights.
One last thing-Spend some time with the Appalachian communities and those in solidarity with their resistance to coal. It sounds pretty patronizing to keep trying to justify their status as an environmental sacrifice zone (not to mention mining areas in China, the southwest U.S., the Gulf South and elsewhere).