Since 1965, my first year of medical school, I knew that coal kills (see Alan Lockwood’s The Silent Epidemic: Coal and the Hidden Threat to Health). Since 1989, when I read Bill McKibben’s The End of Nature, I knew that climate change was the most serious threat to humanity and all other life on earth other than a nuclear holocaust.
It is amazing therefore to watch both of our presidential candidates never discuss climate change, called one of the greatest moral challenges of our times by both climate scientists and faith leaders from all major religious traditions.
It is more than disheartening to hear them use the words “clean coal” to describe our reliance on coal. Coal kills – period.
A Harvard University study (Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal) estimated $74 billion dollars yearly of public health costs in Appalachia alone. If you ever held a piece of coal in your hands you know that coal is dirty, not clean.
Coal is expensive – all external costs add $374 billion in added costs to coal yearly.
Coal destroys communities – more than 500 mountains decapitated, 2000 miles of streams lost, and whole towns abandoned because of mountain top removal mining in Appalachia.
Coal is not just destroying Appalachian communities. North Carolina is home to 14 high hazard coal ash ponds that are leaking toxic chemicals into our groundwater (High Levels of Coal Ash Contaminants Found in N.C. Waters). North Carolina’s agencies are not adequately protecting our groundwater, so a coalition of environmental organizations has filed litigation against the Environmental Management Commission to enforce its regulations. Although not an official intervener in this litigation, NC Interfaith Power & Light is a member of Asheville Beyond Coal. Our goal is to have Progress Energy close its Skyland Coal Plant by 2025.
You can do your part now by contacting Senator Hagan’s and Senator Burr’s offices and asking them to reject any legislation that hampers the EPA from making enforceable rules on coal ash regulation such as Senate Bill 3512.
–Richard Fireman, M.D., NCIPL Public Policy Advisor
Well said Richard. It’s morally irresponsible to continue to burn coal when we know full well that the costs are unaffordable, and, we know full well that we have replacement power options that are easily affordable. It’s time to put 20th-century, dirty power behind us for good. Time to move North Carolina and America beyond coal.
Nobody wants to talk about global warming anymore because:
1. The public no longer believes those who say the earth is warming.
2. The public is not in the mood for their energy bills to increase tenfold if coal were abandoned as a fuel source.
With coal being a plentiful resource, and the fact that NOx and SOx emissions can be safely treated by catalytic conversion and with scrubbers, it would be criminal to not use coal. Coal provides many people with a good living. The leaching problem with coal ash ponds can be addressed if that proves to be a genuine problem, by handling the ash in the dry in above ground landfills.
We are learning that the global temperatures have been at a plateau for the past 16 years yet CO2 emissions have been increasing. The sea levels are not going up like Al Gore said they would. It appears to the public that those who have been making alarmist calls for global disastor are wrong. From Dr. Judith Curry’s (Ga. Tech Professor of Climate Science) climate blog, http://judithcurry.com/2012/10/17/pause-waving-the-italian-flag/, the evidence against global warming is stronger than the evidence for global warming. It has always been an unproven theory that CO2 emissions causes global warming.