Down to the wire : confronting climate collapse / David - Index of

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120 connections
obvious questions. How far does the plume of heavy metals coming
from coal-washing operations go down the Kanawha, Ohio,
and Mississippi rivers and into the drinking water of communities
elsewhere? What other economy—based on wind power,
land restoration, the sustainable use of forests, nontimber forest
products, ecotourism, and human craft skills—might still fl ourish
in the remnants of these ancient hills? What is the true cost of
“cheap” coal? Why do the profi ts from coal mining always leave
the state? Why is so much of the land owned by absentee corporations?
Why do so few hold absolute power over so many and
so much?
Once you subtract the permanent ecological ruin and crimes
against humanity, there really isn’t much to add, as a country song
once put it. Believers in “clean coal” ought to spend some time
in the coalfi elds, survey the ruined hills and lives, and talk to the
residents in order to understand what those words really mean
at the point of extraction. And for all of the talk about safely
and permanently sequestering carbon from burning coal, there is
precious little evidence that it could done at all, or were it possible,
that it could compete with improved energy effi ciency and
renewable energy. “Clean coal” is a scam foisted on the gullible by
the coal companies hoping for a few more years of profi t at a cost
we cannot fathom.
Nearly a thousand miles separate the coalfi elds of West Virginia
from the city of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, yet in some
important ways they are a lot closer than can be measured in miles.
The connection is carbon. Coal is mostly carbon, and for every
ton of coal burned, 3.6 tons of CO 2 eventually enter the atmosphere
and remain there for one or two centuries, raising global
temperatures, warming oceans and thereby creating bigger storms,
melting ice, and raising sea levels for a long time to come. And
between the remaining hills of Appalachia and the sinking land
of the Louisiana coast, tens of thousands of people living downwind
from coal-fi red power plants die prematurely each year from