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Press Conference Cont., Meeting with Sen. Rockefeller's State Director
In December, a climate change rally was held outside of the old Daniel Boone Hotel in Charleston, along with a press conference in the lobby. The building currently houses U.S. Sen. John D. Rockefeller's office.
People gathered in support of a strong climate change bill and later, some would go on to deliver a letter and banner to Rockefeller's staff and ask for the senator's support.
The media did little to nothing with the rally, and as you all know you need the media to help garner public support for your issue, so I'm posting it now since health care reform is getting butchered (as expected) and then once that gets shot between the eyes (as expected), hopefully climate change will actually become an issue AGAIN, this year (especially in West Virginia), since our country's economy is still hurting and fixing the problem will actually create jobs.
So let's make climate an issue in 2010 and get our Congressional delegation to push for a 35% reduction in CO2 emmissions by 2020 and create much needed jobs in the process! Wreck the world, then save it and make money off of doing so. That's the American way!
***Groups represented at rally and press conference: 1SKY WV (Andrew Porter), WV Environmental Council (Jesse Johnson), Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (Mel Tyree), UE 170 (John Thompson), Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Charleston (Rev. Rose Edington)***
It is important to note that the date of temperature rise correlates to the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere, as plotted in the following graph
In case the data on those two graphs isn't clear enough, I've included the following satellite photographs to illustrate some of the consequences my favorite planet is already experiencing (note the dates on which each was taken)
A bi-partisan effort by two female senators Cantwell and Collins, promises to assist the efforts of renewable, sustainable energy projects. This represents a marked difference from previous bills. The best thing about it is that it's only 39 pages as introduced (PDF), lets see how many are added as a result of fossil interference.
I find it really hard to follow what's going on in Copenhagen at COP15, but I know enough to tell this is the big story of the day - Developing nations walk out of climate talks.
The G77, a group which represents 130 developing countries, walked out because it is concerned the existing Kyoto protocol will be abandoned.
Australia's Climate Change Minister Penny Wong confirmed that organisers were trying to fix the problem and coax back the developing world.
Many countries at the UN climate summit want a brand new treaty to tackle climate change, but the developing world wants the Kyoto protocol to continue as well.
The protocol forces rich countries to reduce or limit their greenhouse gas emissions.
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It is understood developing countries walked out of the working groups at the summit today, and have refused to take part in special meetings which have been organised to tackle the biggest obstacles in the negotiations.
A plenary session, for all countries, has not started as planned because of the breakdown.
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"An extension only of the Kyoto Protocol is not going to achieve the environmental outcome the world needs,'' Senator Wong said.
Australia does not want the Kyoto Protocol to be the only vehicle to tackle climate change because it does not include the US, nor major developing countries like China and India.
Update: More details available from TreeHugger, too.
The other major issue on the table right now is finances. The US still spends more than $10 billion per year of taxpayer money on subsidies to fossil fuel companies. One of the big issues the G77 countries have is many developing countries cannot afford to green their economies without financial help.
We're not talking about the more developed countries like China or India--they're already committing billions to their efforts. These are the poorer countries in Africa and other parts of the world.
One of the reasons why global climate change represents a major national security threat to the United States is because the civil unrest and failed governments that follow dramatic climate changes in developing countries.
Surely a country as great as America is resourceful enough to help the poorest countries in the world make a move to sustainable energy development, too. That would be a far wiser investment than hand outs to the most profitable corporations in the world.
I posted a version of this diary at DailyKos on Saturday morning. Thank you to everyone who engaged in a constructive dialogue on the topic there and on Facebook over the weekend.
If you're not really sure what "Clean Coal" is, that's easily forgiven. Clean Coal has meant a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Many decades ago, one enterprising company sold "clean coal" that burned with less smoke in your home heating furnace. Today, the term usually refers to carbon capture and storage (CCS) or coal-to-liquid fuel (CTL).
The Obama administration and leading figures in Congress are still pushing for tens of billions of dollars of investments in "cleaner coal." With a pause in consideration on the energy and climate change legislation, it's a good time to ask... just what we would we get in return for that investment?
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For those who like to cut to the chase, here's the short answer. Carbon capture and storage is risky and expensive. Coal to liquid only makes sense if you ignore carbon emissions or if expect we'll lose access to foreign sources of oil. But, read on. There's another major challenge you probably aren't aware of.
Sadly, although it might make little economic or scientific sense, the political logic behind clean coal is overwhelming. Coal is mined in some politically potent states-Illinois, Montana, West Virginia, Wyoming-and the coal industry spends millions on lobbying. The end result of the debate is all too likely to resemble Congress's corn-based ethanol mandates: legislation that employs appealing buzzwords to justify subsidies to a politically favored constituency-while actually worsening the problem it seeks to solve.
The Meigs piece is good at laying out the basics of carbon capture and storage, but an even more detailed look at the economics is provided by Richard Heinberg, writing for the Solutions Journal. (All emphasis in quotes is mine.)
The "clean coal" argument runs like this: America is brimming with cheap coal, which provides almost half our electricity and is the most carbon-intensive of the conventional fossil fuels. The nation will need an enormous amount of energy over the next few decades, but renewable sources just aren't ready to provide all-or even the bulk-of that energy. Meanwhile, preventing catastrophic climate change requires that we stop venting carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is possible to capture and store the CO2 that would otherwise be emitted from burning coal, and elements of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology are already in use on a small scale. Put all of these factors together and the case for government funding of research and development of "clean coal" seems strong.
However, several recent studies of US coal supplies suggest that much that we think we know about coal is wrong. If these studies are correct, the argument for investing in "clean coal" becomes tenuous on economic grounds alone. These studies call into question the one "fact" that both pro-coal and anti-coal lobbies have taken for granted: that the US has a virtually limitless supply of cheap coal.
Back in April, Democrat Rep. Nick Rahall (WV-03), spoke to this unpleasant truth. He noted "the state's most productive coal seams likely will be exhausted in 20 years." The backlash from in-state coal interests was strong. Rahall has not spoken about coal supplies since, and for that brief moment of truth his consequence is a coal-industry funded primary challenger.
What would it take for Rep. Rahall to say something like this? Back to the Heinberg piece for the answer...
Doubts were first raised in a book-length 2007 report by the National Academy of Sciences titled "Coal: Research and Development to Support National Energy Policy" (1), which noted that "Present estimates of coal reserves are based upon methods that have not been reviewed or revised since - 1974," and concluded that a newer and better assessment "may substantially reduce the number of years' supply."
Also in 2007, an energy analytics organization founded by a member of the German Parliament, Energy Watch Group (2), released a study of US and world coal supplies concluding that global coal production will reach a peak and begin to decline sometime around 2025, and that US coal production will peak only slightly later-perhaps by 2030 or 2035.
Last December the USGS issued a report (3) on the nation's largest and most productive coalfield, in Wyoming, finding that, at current prices, only about six percent of the coal can be profitably mined; if coal prices soared, then more of the coal would be recoverable-but then coal wouldn't be economically competitive with other energy sources.
But I keep hearing we have hundreds of years of coal left in the United States. That has to be correct doesn't it?
America's coal resources are indeed vast-none of the studies claims otherwise. However, during the past century, coal reserves (the portion of total coal resources that can be mined profitably with existing technologies) shrank much faster than could be accounted for by the depletion of those resources through mining. That is because geologists are doing a better job now of taking into account "restrictions" that make most coal impractical to mine-factors having to do with location, depth, seam thickness, and coal quality. In recent years, some nations have reduced their booked coal reserves by 90 percent or more on the basis of new, more realistic surveys. The National Academy of Sciences report mentioned above is essentially a plea for an updated US national survey, and it offers abundant reasons for thinking that such a survey would almost certainly reveal a much smaller reserve base than the one on which current supply forecasts are founded.
Moreover, when it comes to forecasting future coal supplies the official agencies seem to have been asking the wrong question, namely, "When will the nation run out of coal?" The customary answer is, "Not for a couple of hundred years or more"-which is a sufficiently long period for current energy planning. But more relevant questions are, "When will it no longer be possible to increase the rate at which coal is being extracted?", and "When will coal cease to be an economically competitive energy source?" These are addressed in the Energy Watch Group study, which reasons that, long before the nation runs out of coal, production will peak and start to decline due to the depletion of easily accessible, high-quality deposits. Already some of America's most important coal regions are long past their glory days, and recent field surveys by the USGS (including the one cited above) suggest that the capacities of even the most abundant coalfields in the nation have been over-estimated.
So what? As long as we've got coal to mine, shouldn't we try to burn it as cleanly as possible?
A 2007 MIT study, "The Future of Coal" (4), found that if just 60 percent of the CO2 from US coal-fired power plants were to be captured and compressed to a liquid, its daily volume would equal the amount of oil Americans consume each day (about 20 million barrels). The study also concluded that a huge increase in investment in industrial-scale demonstration plants would be required now even to know in 10 or 15 years if the technology can work at a meaningful scale. All of this underscores the basic fact that carbon capture and storage is going to be very expensive-if it is even possible to accomplish on the scale that is being proposed.
Yet there is a subtler but possibly even more decisive price tag for "clean coal": the energy cost. According to the most recent estimate (from Harvard University's Belfer Center (5), at least 30 percent of the energy produced by burning coal will be needed to run the system for capturing, compressing, pumping, and burying CO2. Therefore any efficiency benefit from gasifying coal at IGCC power plants would be canceled out.
But already the average quality of coal being mined is declining-that is, we get less energy for each ton of coal burned today than we did ten years ago. This is a natural consequence of the "low-hanging-fruit" principle of resource extraction, in which we tend to consume the highest-quality, most easily accessed resources first.
So as time goes on, the US will need to burn more coal, while the coal itself will be more scarce and costly. And the technology used will be far more expensive and complex, both to build and to operate, than the system of power plants we have today. Taken together, these factors read like a recipe for cost overruns and spiraling electricity rates.
That doesn't sound good. Wait... did he just say "spiraling electricity rates?" You mean, you and me and me and you are the ones who are going to be paying higher rates if this coal carbon-capture-storage stuff doesn't work out quite right?
Imagine a scenario in which the US goes ahead with the attempt to develop "clean coal" technologies. During the coming decade tens of billions of dollars (mostly from government) would likely need to be invested in research and the construction of demonstration projects. By 2020, the price of coal will already have begun to rise, as supply problems multiply, yet "clean coal" technology won't be ready to deploy widely (the most ambitious proposals don't see that happening until after 2025). Even if renewable energy doesn't get cheaper due to technological advances (and most analysts assume it will), at some point along this timeline the "clean coal" bandwagon will almost certainly grind to a stop because it is simply too expensive to keep going.
That's a rather ugly and all too plausible scenario. West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller insists "that efforts to address greenhouse gas emissions give our economy and our industries the time that's needed to develop and implement these new technologies."
If Rockefeller is right that CCS needs decades and these studies are right that we're fast running out of coal, then we're talking about one massively expensive boondoogle in "clean coal" that will do nothing to clean up our atmosphere, do nothing to secure our economic future, and do nothing to prepare us for a post-carbon future.
I don't agree with the premise that it is okay to waste billions of dollars just to provide political cover to win a vote for energy and climate change legislation. Those Senators and Representatives who say that "cleaner coal" technology is essential to win their vote need to prove how it could ever be an economically viable option.
I’ve watched the battles of left and right, the old enlightenment political battles go on my whole life, quite literally, and mostly, I’ve watched scorched earth that left no one happy or satisfied. Both sides have had their victories and defeats, some good and some bad has come out of this. But the fixation on means here, rather than ends – that is, the fixation on alliances with political parties and traditional battles has done more harm than good, and cost us many good ends. And in fixating on the scorched earth battles, we’ve built up barriers of anger and contempt, a fixation on fights lost and battles [won], to the radical loss of both common ground and perspective about what matters the most.
...what we need now is a place to stand and build. I get angry when I see someone believe passionately in something I think is deeply wrong – but I am adult enough to know that what matters is not that you believe as I do, but that we find a way to live and go forward into our common center.
She describes the "children of Moloch" as
the great mass of Americans and other rich world denizens whose central ideology is technological progress and consumption - Moloch is their god, the overarching center of their world is the urge for more and more comfort, more and more possessions, more and more wealth, more and more technology in complete disregard of the fact that these things are not possible....At the center of their value system is something empty and deeply wrong, and that emptiness stretches out and empties their world. They do not know what is missing from their lives, so they seek out more to fill the empty space.
and the "People of the Center" as
anyone who has something other than Moloch at the center of their world, a hope for the future, an investment in the past, the love of a G-d, the love of humanity in general, an ethical paradigm that actually trumps the desire for more - and thus perceives, sometimes instinctively, sometimes after long study, that we cannot go on this way, and must find something else.
She also points out that both categories cross all political, cultural, and religious lines.
Over time, in a deeply unequal society, we come to feel almost totally on our own — and unprotected. Our society becomes a place where people don’t help each [other]. They fear each other.
The Public understanding in the region about the challenges and opportunities presented by climate change and climate change policy suffers from ignorance, confusion, anger, fear, denial, and a sense of powerlessness -- at all levels, from elites to "man/woman on the street." Political and community leaders, including national political representatives from the region, are hyper-cautious about candidly addressing these questions and issues. Both within the region, and in how the region interacts on the national and global stage, the risk of unwise, wasteful, and counterproductive choices and actions is materially increased.
Cornel West says that such "progressives" must link their work to social movements, for the law as a system is not able to take on such inequity without the kind of support that social movements supply in less conservative times. ... Critical theory has taught us to look deeply at the structure and not be afraid to change what isn't working. It should also have taught us to look at the cost of the changes we seek and know that when others are frightened of them, rhetoric won't remove that fear. We need public discourse, trust, faith in one another. This is one of the main reasons I caution you when an effective academic resource trashes its opponents. Like Cornell West, I find that counterproductive.
Astyk has laid out more eloquently than anyone I have read for a long time the need for finding the common center and working together - in coordinated individual and community action rather than dividing into opposing teams with litmus tests for belonging and relying only on the law.
The study, Clean Energy and Climate Policy for U.S. Growth and Job Creation (pdf), assumes that the bills will be kept at least as strong on emissions targets (17% nationwide reductions by 2020, 83% by 2050) and renewable energy standards (mandate that utilities get at least 20% of electricity from renewable suppliers) and that there is strong continued funding for renewable energy research and development (Obama put 60$ billion into the stimulus bill, but more will be needed).
The study looks at the impact of the economies of each and every state--and finds that in each case, the effect is positive.
There are three main findings, all of them noteworthy:
1. All 50 states can gain economically from strong federal energy and climate policy, despite the diversity of their economies and energy mixes . . . they all have substantial opportunities to grow their economies by promoting energy saving and domestic renewable energy alternatives.
2. Contrary to what is commonly assumed, comprehensive national climate policy does not benefit the coasts at the expense of the heartland states. In fact, heartland states will gain more by reducing imported fossil fuel dependence because they are generally spending a higher proportion of their income on this low employment, high price risk supply chain.
3. The country as a whole can gain 918,000 to 1.9 million jobs, and household income can grow by $488 to $1,176, by 2020 under comprehensive energy and climate policy . . . Indeed, a central finding of this research is that the stronger the federal climate policy, the greater the economic reward.
And that's really the takeaway here--as noted by the study, by "aggressively promoting efficiency on the demand side of energy markets, alternative fuel and renewable technology development on the supply side can be combined with carbon pollution reduction to yield economic growth and net job creation."
West Virginia could benefit from new energy policies designed to address climate change. What can go wrong? There's two major risks.
#1 - The study is based on the assumption that "the bills will be kept at least as strong on emissions targets... renewable energy standards... strong continued funding for renewable energy research and development."
One major risk is that Sens. like our own Rockefeller and Byrd will continue working to undermine the aspects of the bill that will deliver the most economic benefit for a new energy economy. A "strong" bill is needed not only to address escalating climate change but also to stimulate creation of a new energy economy.
#2 - Another major risk is that West Virginia won't take advantage of the opportunities for renewal energy development. Both Reps. Mollohan and Rahall have spoken out against specific wind farm developments before. The green energy sector in West Virginia lags behind other states and is growing at too slow of a rate to catch up. Unless we change course, West Virginia will be left in the dust.
The energy economy of the future will look very different than that of the past. West Virginia needs leadership that will look at all the options ahead, not just cling to our heritage and traditions of mining and burning coal.
At least, that's what the illustrious editor of the Wheeling "news"papers is telling his readers today.
Instead of giving the EPA credence, we suggest Americans listen to more objective - honest, in other words - sources. For example, American Electric Power officials have estimated that passage of climate change bills as now configured could increase the cost of coal-generated electricity by about 75 percent.
Then, he goes on to just make up a complete lie. Mike Myer the liar is quite fond of doing this.
Here in West Virginia and Ohio, passage of bills such as those being debated in the Senate and House of Representatives probably would cost the typical family $100 more a month - or more.
Myer provides no citations, no sourcing, no anything. He just makes it up out of polluted air! It seems that the Blankenship-Nutting Cartel is getting very desperate.
Then again, this is typical of Myer considering the three anti-gay editorials he's published in his "news"paper over the last three weeks.
And they wonder why subscription sales are nearing an all-time low? They wonder why advertising sales have experienced a sharp decline in the last two years?
I hear people talk about the "liberal media", yet all I see is right-wing extremism from the Nutting Cartel.
To end on a more humorous note: "You might be a Republican if... you complain about liberal bias in the obituaries section."
I prepared this diary at the request of national climate change activists wanting to better understand the West Virginia political landscape. It originally appeared yesterday as a contribution to the Adopt A Senator series at DailyKos.
What most casual observers of Congress know about Senator Robert C. Byrd is he's the longest-serving member in the Senate's history and he's been incredibly successful at steering federal dollars to West Virginia.
(Political Science Professor) Rupp remembers a quote from former Democratic House speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, that Byrd posted in his office near the Senate Appropriations Committee Room inside the Capitol. It said: "Bob is a living encyclopedia, and legislative graveyards are filled with the bones of those who underestimated him."
Time and time again, Sen. Byrd has delivered for West Virginia. The question of the moment is, what does Byrd think West Virginia needs in the next energy and climate bill?
This diary is my contribution to Blog Action Day: '09 Climate Change. "Blog Action Day is an annual event held every October 15 that unites the world's bloggers in posting about the same issue on the same day with the aim of sparking discussion around an issue of global importance."
Our planet is faced with a grave and serious danger: global climate change. How we go about addressing this issue will say as much about humanity as what we do to address it.
Unfortunately, here in Appalachia the fear of change is stoking divisions. Instead of coming together to face a common foe, man-made climate change, strong vested issues are stoking neighbors in fever-pitched disputes with one another.
The friends of coal may feel they made some tactical gains this week--they certainly showed they know how to shout down a speaker. But no matter how loud your cheering section is, it won't overcome being outmatched on the playing field.
In fact, if you listen carefully to the words of state Sen. H. Truman Chafin (D-Mingo) on the Youtube video above, you'll start to realize he not only stuck his foot in his mouth... he then proceeded to shoot himself in the foot.
Sen. Chafin completely ignored what the purpose of the hearing was. He failed to provide the Army Corp of Engineers with any useful information regarding rules changes they are required by recent court rulings to make. Instead, State Sen. Chafin decided to rile up the crowd to score cheap political points. That's grandstanding, not responsible leadership.
A National Backlash
Right now Big Coal has hat in hand in front of Congress asking for a huge new regulatory structure required in order for carbon capture and storage to have any chance of success.
To get that new regulatory structure enacted, Congress will need confidence that new enforcement mechanisms will favor long-term environmental concerns over short-term industry profit considerations. (CCS is a lot like nuclear waste... a toxic item to be stored forever.)
Pulling stunts like turning a deliberative public hearing into a political rally hurts Big Coal's lobbying efforts in Congress. Proving that the Army Corp of Engineers is unable to do something as simple as run a public hearing does nothing to inspire confidence they can handle permitting processes.
What Leadership Looks Like
Perhaps because they are there in D.C. negotiating on behalf of Big Coal, Rahall and Byrd seem to get this. The leaders here in W.Va. would do well to figure out this political calculus, too.
Just publicly going out and calling an agency names or beating up on an agency is not going to work when you go the next day or the next week to that agency and ask for their help. That's just human nature.
Coming Together
Trying to out-shout, rather than reason with, people with valid concerns does little to prove the coal industry is ready to be a partner in providing oversight for a complex new technology like carbon capture and storage. Plugging your ears and shouting yourself hoarse is a sure-fire way to get uninvited from a debate.
There are people who should know better--not just Internet commenters, but also people in charge of thing--equating the current non-violent protests with what I completely agree have been radical, extreme, violent actions in other parts of the country in the past.
Instead of making wild claims about threats to coal, we need honest brokers to negotiate a viable future for the West Virginia economy. If West Virginia coal companies want a place at the negotiating table for the future energy economy, they need to start acting responsibly. They owe that to their employees, they owe that the communities they claim to support, and, quite frankly, they owe it to their shareholders, too.
The suffering of those negatively effected by mountaintop removal is every bit as real as the fears of coal miners built up to an impassioned frenzy by friends of coal. Collaborating to find solutions, not confronting each other with yelling and screaming, will benefit us all.
We're all in this together. The sooner we can start working together to find solutions to the problems we all share, the better off we all are.
1Sky launches West Virginia campaign for bold clean energy job and climate legislation this fall
West Virginia, WV. As health care heats up in the U.S. senate, the planet is heating up too, as is the buzz around the senate climate legislation. The five hottest years in the last century all occurred in the last decade, and without immediate action to cut down on global warming pollution, it could be too late.
The exciting news is we can jumpstart our economy with millions of clean energy jobs and transition us away from coal and other dirty fuels of the past and towards a clean energy future. Moreover, we can save families in West Virginia hundreds of dollars through insulating homes and increasing energy efficiency.
This fall is a watershed moment in the fight on global warming. The U.S. senate will take up what must be the most far reaching global warming legislation ever voted on in congress. In addition, the international community will meet for the UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen this December to chart up long term global targets for taking on global warming. Oil and coal interests have well-heeled lobbyists in Washington, D.C. that contribute hundreds of thousands of dollars to political campaigns and millions on advertising and without strong and deep grassroots organizing neither of these, a strong senate bill or a global accord will be realized.
A handful of key senators like Jay Rockefeller and Robert Byrd will play a key role in this tight vote. 1Sky is building the buzz in the national and state media to put our senators in the spotlight. The best way to get involved to voice bold support for climate solutions to our senators is to come to 1Sky's kick off meeting Thursday September 24th at the Charleston Public Library (123 Capitol Street, Charleston, WV) from 7:30-8:30 PM.
by JBdem4usa This is from a post on the West Virginia Environmental Councils bulletin board minutes ago.
Treesit Stops Blasting on Massey Mountaintop Removal Site in the Coal River Valley
The campaign to end mountaintop removal is kicking it up a notch in the coalfields of southern West Virginia!
Right now, two people are occupying two treetops at the edge of Massey Energy's Edwight mountaintop removal site above Pettry Bottom and Peachtree in Raleigh County, West Virginia. At 6:30 a.m., concerned citizens unrolled two banners reading "Stop Mountain Top Removal" and "DEP - Don't Expect Protection" from their treetop platforms. They are perched 80 feet above the ground, within 30 feet of the mine, and within the 300 feet of blasting. Blasting is prohibited when people are within such proximity.
For the full press release and updates, visit www.climategroundzero.org. Follow the action on twitter here. Initial pictures can be seen here.
Read on for statements from the treetop activists:
"I am sitting in this tree to halt the blasting that endangers the residents of Pettry Bottom and Clays Branch," Laura Steepleton, a community organizer who has worked extensively to secure protection from blasting above Pettry Bottom. "The people of Pettry Bottom, Clays Branch are living below a land slide waiting to happen and the only barrier between fallen trees, mud, boulders and water and the Pettry Bottom community is a wooden stake and tarp fence. The DEP needs to step in and protect its citizens - not Massey Energy - stop the blasting above Petty Bottom, and end mountaintop removal."
Army veteran and lifelong West Virginian, Zoe Beavers states "I am on this mountain because I believe that every single West Virginian who is proud of being from 'Almost Heaven' should take a stand against mountaintop removal. I am here because DEP officials have failed to stop the blasting. I am putting my body and reputation on the line to do their job and stop the blasting. I served in our military so that we can all live in a country that does not exploit and destroy its land and people."
This is the thirteenth in a series of non-violent direct actions and protests that have brought together Coal River Valley residents, NASA climate scientist James Hansen, students, underground miners, military veterans, concerned citizens and environmentalists from across the nation with the goal of ending mountaintop removal. This is the third protest in two weeks to focus attention on the WV Department of Environmental Protection and their embattled Secretary, Randy Huffman. It also follows days after the leak of DEP biologist Doug Wood's memo on the scale of environmental degradation caused by mountaintop removal, directly contradicting Huffman's statements at a senate hearing last June.
But the presentation by Myron Ebell of the Competitive Enterprise Institute struck me as really little more than a pep talk, urging coal industry officials to continue to deny that global warming is real and keep fighting any effort at all to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
"This is about a lot more than defending your industry and your state," Ebell told a couple dozen coal operators, utility representatives and other industry officials. "This is about the future of the American economy. You're fighting for every American here."
The coal folks, of course, ate this up. It's exactly what they want to hear. This is what they tell themselves. This is what they want the rest of us to believe.
But that's not all that Ebell said that the coal folks loved... he also made it clear that there's one other key point that the forces fighting any action on climate change rely on: Their insistence that the very notion that human pollution is heating up the planet is, as he put it, "a speculative theory that appears to have very little evidence in fact."
So what's Ebell got to back this up? Well, not very much, apparently. He said he has a more detailed presentation on "the science," but didn't bring it with him because he only wanted to spend "about two minutes" on that part of his talk.
Basically, Ebell stuck to one piece of information he said supports his view: That average global temperatures have not gone up since 1997, when the Kyoto treaty was negotiated. Specifically, he said:
It was no warmer in 2008 than it was in 1997.
OK ... can't we be done with this kind of cherry-picking of data? I mean come on. This is all too important for that.
We're all in big trouble if the science used to build coal mines and coal ash impoundments is on as shaky ground as their understanding of global climate change.
It's not a ringing endorsement for putting billions of dollars into any kind of research and development (like carbon capture and sequestration) to benefit such an anti-science crowd. This is one more argument to invest money in more promising alternative energy options--the coal industry should not be rewarded for behavior like this.
If they can't agree with an overwhelming scientific consensus on climate change, how will they ever responsibly run the operations required to monitor the storage of captured carbon safely for decades (or centuries)?
Until they get past the self-delusion, these new technologies may be just beyond their intellectual capacity.
I'll give them both credit for playing the politics in as saavy a manner as possible--they've been working all along to extract as many concessions as possible that benefit the coal industry, to the point that Greenpeace now opposes the bill as too weak. Talk about a payday for King Coal, one report says:
among many, many other things, the 1,200-page bill would also devote $60 billion to making sure clean coal isn't a loser.
I haven't decided yet whether I'm for or against this bill (at this moment, I'm leaning slightly for). I'd like to see a much stronger bill--something that is guided more by science and less by politics. Still, I hold out slim hope this bill will get better before it is signed and equally slim hope it provides a framework for making difficult political decisions ahead. The reality of the "facts on the ground" will force our hand--physics cannot be bargained away, no matter how deeply we bury our heads in coal ash.
Finally, for those who are--quite understandably--upset with Rep. Rahall and Mollohan on this vote, what did you expect? In politics, your allies will not be with you on every vote. It is unreasonable to expect that any climate change bill Rahall (in particular) and Mollohan (almost as much) would support is a bill that is going to meaningfully address the magnitude of the environmental issues facing us.
When our Democratic delegation in Congress stops voting the progressive way on Democratic budget priorities, ending our presence in Iraq, and moving toward universal health care, that's when there's ample room to start talking about primaries from the left.
Meanwhile, there's no news here. King Coal still reigns.
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