Medical Group Condemns Coal in Critical Report - Coal Kills

[ensho]

http://www.counterpunch.org/frank11272009.html


So you thought smoking cigarettes was bad for your health? Try living next to a coal-fired power plant.

That’s the diagnosis Physicians for Social Responsibility (PSR) relayed to the public in a comprehensive medical study released on November 18 called Coal’s Assault of Human Health. In it, the organization, comprised of physicians and public health experts, claims that coal pollutants damage every major organ in the human body and contribute to four of the top five leading causes of death in the United States.

Not since NASA’s James Hansen rang the global warming alarm about coal’s major contribution to climate change has there been a more dire call to shut down coal operations in the United States. It is not simply about cleaning up the coal process; it is about halting its production altogether in order to immediately save lives.

At every stage in its life cycle coal can negatively impact human health, from mining operations, cleaning, transportation to burning and disposing of the combustion waste. PSR reports that many Americans are being affected daily by coal and the exposure is contributing to horrible health problems; heart attacks, lung cancer, strokes, asthma among others.

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Recently CoalSwarm*, an environmental group that monitors coal issues, released a list of 126 coal-fired power plants that are surrounded by 10,000 people or more living within a three-mile radius. Most of these hundreds of thousands of Americans are being exposed to deadly coal particulates without even knowing it.

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The Obama administration does not seem to be listening. Last June the Department of Energy poured $1 billion into relaunching FutureGen, a project that intends to show how a plant can capture carbon emissions.
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Indeed the coal industry is spending $35 million annually to promote their clean-coal technology, which at this point is nothing more than an advertising motto conjured up by high paid PR firms.

However, the money coal companies are spending, not only on public relations but also on lobbying, seem to be paying off. The current climate legislation hurdling its way through Congress is laden with huge subsidies for the coal industry.

(throw up on the congress people)

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"These stark conclusions leave no room for doubt or delay," says Kristen Welker-Hood, PSR's director of environment and health programs. "The time has come for our nation to establish a health-driven energy policy that replaces our dependence on coal with clean, safe alternatives. Business as usual is extracting a deadly price on our health. Coal is no longer an option."
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COAL IS NO LONGER AN OPTION

[naaman fletcher]

1. Of course coal is an option

Saying things like "Coal is no longer an option" does nothing but make environmentalists look like fools. The simple fact is that if we stopped burning coal tomorrow we would literally go back to the stone age.

The reason why we burn coal is that it is the cheapest fuel when all things are factored in for most power-plants.

But, there is a trade-off. The trade-off is that it is not as clean as other sources of energy. There are two rational things to do about that.

1. Is to tax the emissions of the pollutants more, which will push up the cost of burning coal. The 2nd is to take that money and use it to help fund both cleaner energy research as well as cleaner coal technology. Despite what this article says there have in fact been great strides made in the burning of coal. It is not nearly as bad as it was back in the 60's and 70's.

Anyway, the point is that right now solar and other forms of energy production are too expensive.. but, the price is coming down. By nudging the prices of energy production from coal up, and using that money to further nudge the prices of cleaner forms of energy down, industry will start to shift more to other forms of energy on its own.

But "Coal is not an option" might sound nice but it is unrealistic and it harms credible environmental policy because rational people then suspect that the credible environmental policy is really just a front for "Coal is not an option" people.

[ensho]

2. kicking before I go for the day

COAL IS NO LONGER AN OPTION

[KittyWampus]

3. Coal is a necessary "evil". And the Left better wake and start advocating for thing like safer coal

mining for the miners, less harmful environmental ways of extracting coal and better tech for burning it.

We need to green but to get to even a 98% Green Economy we will need coal or we would perish.