Do you ever find yourself thinking "bullshit!" as you drive by one of those Clean Coal billboards that are posted around town? I thought this response to the coal industry from EcoGeek.com's Hank Green deserved a mention here:
No...you're not green. You're full of crap.
Your industry turns mountains inside out, poisons the water of the rural poor in America and throughout the world. Your industry has never made an environmental move in its long and storied history without being forced to by a government. The promotional video for 'clean coal' at your lame PR site lauds a carbon sequestration plant that has now been canceled because it was determined to be pretty much impossible. The cleanest coal plants in the world still create more sulfer dioxide than the environment can deal with without acidifying the rain and the soil.
Of course, the future is in sequestering carbon, right? Pumping it into the ground so that it never hits the atmosphere. The problem is, building a sequestered carbon coal plant is actually more expensive than building a solar thermal plant. Why would we stick with you when solar is revving up to be cheaper than coal without expensive, unrealistic sequestration?
The only thing that makes you seem even a little green today is how extremely destructive you used to be. You cannot be, you will never be, green. Give up...go home...enjoy the next few decades because they will be your last.
We're moving on without you, and you're going to have to deal with that. Actual clean technologies are here now. We don't need you anymore. There are 45 gigawatts of renewable energy planned for the United States. You are not renewable...you are not America's Power...you are not the future and you sure as hell aren't green. Stop pretending.
Sincerely,
Hank Green and the EcoGeek Team
4 comments:
this might already be out there, but i say it's time for a youtube video illustrating how dumb this clean coal thing is... because people in west virginia are starting to buy into it - i must've seen 6 clean coal bumper stickers on my way home last time
Agreed...and I think the Government shoulders most of the blame here. The Federal Government and also the Governor here in Pennsylvania, and other states, are throwing billions of dollars at clean coal technologies. Who is getting most of the benefit? The big coal companies are the ones reaping the benefits of this windfall, not the entrepreneurs who are the ones who can really shake things up.
The same can be said for corn based ethanol, which the federal government has chosen as its substitute of choice for gasoline.
Aaaaaaaargh! It's .org, not .com!
Thank you for stating the obvious in this post. I was wondering who was finally going to say this out loud.
How about publishing this in the PG and Trib to get a little more light on this than the helmet lights are showing?
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