Mar 5 2009

“As black as coal” is a standard English idiom, so for some coal industrialist to stick the word clean next Clean Coal 3 to the word coal and have it stick means either a) they are geniuses b) we are stupid c) they have more money than sense or d) all of the above.

Watching this video made me wonder where the phrase “clean coal” actually came from. Remember the ‘acid rain’ environmental campaigns from the 1980’s? That’s when trees and fish were dying from sulfuric acid created in the clouds, sparking the public outrage that led eventually to the creation of the clean air act of 1990. This law set a goal of reducing annual sulfur dioxide emissions by 10 million tons below 1980 levels.

In order to accomplish this, coal-burning plants had to improve the quality of coal being fed into the power plants and they invested in technology to ‘scrub’ most of the acid-causing agents from their emissions. Each power plant was allowed to emit a certain amount of sulfur dioxide up until a cap. If the power plant had clean coal technology installed in their plant, they would be way below their allowance and could then sell the rights to their extra emissions to other plants that emitted too much and wanted to avoid a fine. This ‘cap and trade system’ was very successful and in just 20 years it has reduced sulfur dioxide emissions to half of 1980 levels.

So this begs the question is ‘clean coal’ clean? The answer depends on whether you are living in the 1980’s or the 2000’s. Much to the dismay of oil companies who funded misinformation campaigns, we now have unequivocal evidence that our unrestricted carbon dioxide emissions have been warming our planet, changing our weather and melting polar ice caps. Coal is mostly carbon and when you burn it you get carbon dioxide. So it should be no surprise that coal-fired power plants in the USA release over 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air each year, accounting for about 1/3 of all our fossil-fuel carbon emissions. In order to extract the coal we are leveling the Appalachian mountains, and by burning it we are speeding global warming and sinking small island nations like Kiribati. If you want to find out how ‘clean’ clean coal is, try asking Kiribati’s president Mohamed Nasheed or a hurricane Katrina victim. Just don’t ask a coal company executive.

Rachel Maddow and Brian Harwick of the Reality Campaign take on the coal companies in this video.