The Alliance for Appalachia

As tempting as it is to become excited about this Reality Coalition campaign I feel compelled to remind us all that the Alliance for Climate Protection is focused only on the emissions aspect of burning coal. The assumption being that once CO2 is captured and stored (as if that will ever be possible) then we have “clean coal”.

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS CLEAN COAL —

• not as long as any or all methods of mining violate the law, the land, the people or the workers
• not as long as transporting that coal bullies and endangers communities along narrow roads, school buses, local drivers
• not as long as careless coal trucks and trains overturn and spill into streams and roadways
• not as long as washing that coal leaves toxic sudge to sit in unlined ponds or injected underground where it can pollute water wells and streams and local communities
• not as long as storing and moving that coal produces excessive dust that causes asthma or black lung and coats homes and towns like Blair and Sylvester or endangers nearby schools like Marsh Fork Elementary
• not as long as blasting damages wells and homes and sinks streams
• not as long as subsidence makes sinkholes out of streams, dry savanahs out of farm ponds, and homes unliveable
• not as long as landgrabbing industry reps cheat, rob or otherwise trick homeowners to sell or to turn on their neighbors who don’t
• not as long as industry reps weasel their way into county politics at the expense of small outlying communities
• not as long as that black gold corrupts politics and politicians and regulatory agencies
• not as long as industry exercises the power of its purse to quash all who stand up and speak out
• not as long as the advertising arm of the coal and power industry purposely deludes the public to advance it’s own greed
• not as long as …

Well — you catch my drift…..Thank goodness some state, local and regional groups as well as some of the national groups are not limiting their efforts to concerns about emissions and wearing blinders to all other aspects of the whole cycle of coal – from cradle to grave so to speak.