Issue #227
Sept 14, 2007
Dethroning King Coal
Josh Dorner
Thanks to hard work from the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign, it looks like we've got King Coal on the ropes. But just like any decrepit ruler desperately grasping on to the power he held in a bygone era, King Coal is willing to do just about anything to hold on to its remaining power.
In Iowa, LS/Dynegy -- the biggest player in what has slowed to a coal mosey -- has been busy trying to buy off local community groups with promises of financial largesse IF and only if their new 750 megawatt coal plant gets built. Particularly egregious are efforts to use donations to get the support of local African-American groups, considering that LS/Dynegy plans to build the plant adjacent to low-income neighborhoods that are disproportionately African-American and already suffer from higher than normal rates of respiratory illness. Come to think of it, my mom always did say, a coal plant a day keeps the doctor away. Or maybe it was, a coal plant today, global warming and black lung to stay. Details, details. Not like the mercury I ingested as a child growing up near two of the nation's largest coal-fired power plants has effected my neurological function!
We can find another example of King Coal's reach in a far different corner of America -- Cape Cod. A long and much-discussed battle has been going on for years over the Cape Wind project -- America's first large-scale offshore wind project. The latest to head a group that purports to defend Nantucket Sound is none other than Glenn Wattley, a "coal-industry insider." He claims that "providing incentives to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and developing new technologies are the best ways to control global warming, not wind power." Well, how 'bout that? And here I always thought of wind power as a new technology meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and control global warming? But again, maybe my memory isn't so great.
King Coal's so desperate, pretty soon it'll start acting crazier than that damn Burger King.
2 comments:
Its sounds arrogant as hell.
1. Claiming King Coal is on the ropes. King Coal is gleefully ripping apart my state with strip mining right now, and kentucky, and WVA and Virginia.
2. There are many many groups fighting strip mining, the Sierra Club claiming credit for putting King Coal "on the ropes" is just plain wrong and does a dis service to all the local grassroots groups who have been fighting this campaign tooth and nail for the last decade.
The hypocrisy of calling the opposition of Cape Wind to task because its new leader has a background in the coal industry neglects to mention that the owner of the Cape Wind project, Jim Gordon, also has a fossil fuel background. While Glenn Whattley is not proposing any fossil fuel plants, Jim Gordon is, and continues to do so. Along with Cape Wind, Gordon is proposing a Diesel Power Plant for the community of Chelsea, MA. I would like to hear Gordon explain how that project will reduce greenhouse gas emissions and control global warming.
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