| By Clem Guttata
Rainforest Action Network has a dramatic protest underway at the EPA HQ in DC this afternoon.
n an attempt to further pressure EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson to enforce the Clean Water Act and halt mountaintop removal coal mining (MTR), activists early this morning erected two 20-foot-tall, purple tripod structures in front of the agency's headquarters. A pair of activists perched at the top of the tripods have strung a 25-foot sign in front of the EPA's door that reads, "EPA: pledge to end mountaintop removal in 2010." Six people are locked to the tripods and say they won't leave unless Administrator Jackson commits to a flyover visit of the Appalachian Mountains and MTR sites, which she has never done before.
This is the latest in a series of actions and activities aimed at pressuring the EPA to take more decisive action on mountaintop removal coal mining. Today's tactic is modeled on the multi-day tree-sits that have been happening in West Virginia to protect mountains from coal companies' imminent blasting. Called the worst of the worst strip mining, the practice blows the tops off of whole mountains to scoop out the small seams of coal that lie beneath.
"We're losing our way of life and our culture," said Chuck Nelson, who worked as a coal miner in West Virginia for three decades and came to DC to support today's protest. "Mountaintop removal should be banned today. The practice means total devastation for communities, the hardwood forests, the ecosystems, and the headwaters. Why should our communities sacrifice everything we have?"
This latest action comes on news of mounting scientific evidence of the environmental costs of mountaintop removal coal mining. An important new study details mountaintop removal coal mining's huge carbon footprint.
Written by James F. Fox of the University of Kentucky and J. Elliott Campbell of the University of California, Merced, the paper leaves no doubt that, even if CCS works and is widely deployed, questions will remain about the climate change impacts of mountaintop removal.
[snip]
In fact, this paper reports that mountaintop removal's life-cycle carbon dioxide emissions are 17 percent greater if you include carbon dioxide from sources other than the actual burning of the coal - emissions from cutting down and burning forests, potential release of carbon previously locked up in the soils of the mountains, and from mining and transportation equipment.
That's the potential high-end of those emissions if you assume coal is burned in a conventional power plant.
If the industry switches to CCS-equipped plants that capture most of the emissions from coal-burning, then these other carbon dioxide sources would actually account for nearly twice the emissions of coal burning.
Let's try a little bit of advanced math here. If it takes 30% more fuel to create the same amount of energy after carbon-capture and storage is added to a coal-fired electric plant... and if, conservatively, only 50% of that coal came from mountain top removal coal mines... let's see...
100 + 17 = 117 (100% at plant + 17% more)
0 + 17 + .3 * 17 / 2 = 19.55 (0% at plant + 17% more +
19.55 / 117 = 17%
That means that even if we are able to advance CCS technology to the point where it can capture 100% of the greenhouse gases produced during electricity production, we'd still be producing 17% as much CO2 as we started out with.
So much for the carbon neutral claims Big Coal has been advertising. That's just one more way that clean coal ain't. |
