can BUSH JUSTIFY THIS DESTRUCTION!?...of OUR COUNTRY??
King Coal Pillages Beautiful Land
By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Friday 06 August 2004
In May 2002 I flew over the hills of West Virginia and Kentucky and saw a sight that would sicken
most Americans.
The mining industry is dismantling the ancient mountains and pristine streams of Appalachia
through a form of strip mining known as mountaintop removal.
Mining companies blow off hundreds of feet from the tops of mountains to reach the thin seams of
coal beneath. Colossal machines dump the mountaintops into adjacent valleys, destroying forests
and communities and burying free-flowing mountain streams.
According to the EPA, the waste from mountaintop removal mines has permanently interred 1,200
miles of Appalachian streams, polluted the region's groundwater and rivers and rendered 400,000
acres of some of the world's most biologically rich temperate forests into flat, barren wastelands,
"devoid of topography and flowing water."
"I look at what they're doing and I can see the moonscape that they've created. And it's total
devastation, total devastation. Nothing will ever grow back," Judy Bonds, a 52-year-old grandmother
from Whitesville, W. Va., told me. Bonds runs Coal River Mountain Watch, a community group that
opposes mountaintop removal.
There was no environmental issue about which my father cared more passionately than strip
mining. He visited Appalachia in 1968, and he told me how the coal companies were using this
technique to put miners out of work. In the process, they were also destroying our historic landscapes
and permanently impoverishing the region.
Strip mining made its debut in the 1940s in the Western states, to get at the coal seams just a few
feet below the surface and inaccessible through traditional tunnel mining. To extract the wealth, all
you needed was a bulldozer.
In Appalachia, the mining companies adopted the process to get at deep coal seams. It was a
labor-saving practice with devastating effects. Nothing was left behind, my father said - not even the
hope that Appalachia's people could someday resurrect their economies or communities.
Since my father's trip, the machines and cuts have grown bigger while the work force has shrunk.
Back then, there were 120,000 coal miners in West Virginia - today, fewer than 15,000.
"We've watched our communities become ghost towns," says Bonds, whose family has lived in
Marfork Hollow for nine generations.
"We only have one grocery store where we used to have four. And you can walk through the little
town and see that most of the buildings are boarded up because the businesses failed and the young
people have left the area."
It's the same story wherever King Coal sets up shop. From Appalachia to the Western states of
Wyoming and Utah, the strip miners have permanently destroyed some of the most beautiful country
on Earth, leaving behind a legacy of misery and poverty.
King Coal sends more greenhouse gases into the air and more mercury and acid rain onto our
earth and produces more lung-searing ozone and particulates than any other industry. As the nation's
largest energy provider - more than half of our electricity is coal-fired - big coal is the No. 1 polluter.
It's also the No. 1 Bush donor. Big coal and the coal-burning utilities donated $20 million to
President Bush and other Republicans in 2000, and have since sweetened the pot with another $21
million. Their generosity has not gone unnoticed. No industry had more highly placed sympathizers in
the Bush camp than King Coal.
Lobbyists and executives of coal companies had unparalleled access to Vice President Dick
Cheney's task force while it was creating its new energy bill.
I recently obtained the transcript of a briefing by Quin Shea, a top lobbyist for the Edison Electric
Institute, the electric industry's major lobbying arm, to a closed-door conference of coal and utility
industry big shots in April 2001, a month before Cheney disclosed the administration's energy plan.
Shea had received regular briefings on energy task force business from several White House
insiders. The transcript of Shea's comments reveal that the Bush administration's energy task force
proposals followed a line-by-line game plan devised by his coal and utility contributors.
At the conference, Shea explained that EEI was "working with the vice president" on behalf of coal.
He made clear: "We desperately want to burn more coal. Coal is our friend."
He cautioned, however, that several Clean Air and Clean Water Act requirements - in his words,
"coal killers" - would soon impose costly cleanup measures on fossil-fuel companies unless
something was done to scuttle or delay them.
Lucky for them, Shea explained, the administration was coming to the industry's rescue. Shea
refers to the Republican Party as "our party" and the administration as "we." He warns his cronies
against complacency, however, telling them that in the future they should not assume that they'll have
a president willing to plunder like "Bush or Attila the Hun."
The pillage of Appalachia by King Coal is the work of public officials who view public service as an
opportunity for wholesale plunder. It is just one tragic legacy of this White House.
"I believe that the coal industry has found the best friend they've ever had in the Bush
administration," Judy Bonds told me. "Definitely the Bush administration and the coal industry have
teamed up to completely wipe Appalachia off the map. This is Appalachia's last stand, Mr. Kennedy,
it absolutely is. When the mountains go, so goes our culture and our people. The problem is that I
think it'll be the Bush administration that pushes the stake through our heart."
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., senior attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, chief
prosecuting attorney for Riverkeeper and president of the Waterkeeper Alliance. Distributed by The
New York Times Syndicate.
Go to Original
Kerry to Announce 10-year, $30 Billion Energy Plan
By Jill Lawrence
USA Today
Friday 06 August 2004
Proposal emphasizes alternative fuel to reduce U.S. reliance on foreign oil.
Washington - Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry visits a family farm near Kansas City,
Mo., today to announce a 10-year, $30 billion plan to wean America off foreign oil.
The plan sets two national goals for 2020: that 20% of electricity and 20% of motor fuel come from
alternative sources such as wind, solar, ethanol and biodiesel fuel.
"What we cannot afford is four more years of an energy policy that leaves our security and our
prosperity in the hands of foreign governments who don't share our values," Kerry said in remarks
prepared for delivery. He said his plan would help the country control its destiny, create jobs and
make sure no U.S. soldier has to go to war over Middle East oil.
Kerry's plan would:
Commit $5 billion over the 10-year program to a "clean fuels partnership" among
government, agriculture and industry to encourage and conduct research into
fuels made from corn, soybeans, agricultural waste and other sources. Another
$5 billion would create jobs in clean energy technology.
Devote $10 billion to research into non-polluting ways to burn coal and building
such "clean coal" facilities.
Provide $10 billion to help auto plants adapt to build high-tech "cars of the future"
and give consumers a $5,000 tax incentive to buy energy-efficient vehicles.
Kerry aides said the costs would be offset by new fuel efficiency standards for federal buildings and
vehicles, and reinstatement of a tax on oil companies to pay to clean up polluted sites.
Other Kerry proposals include streamlining 300 state and local regulations on gas prices and
stabilizing the power grid. The grid failed in a spectacular blackout last Aug. 14; improvements have
languished in an energy bill stalled by a provision to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in
Alaska. Kerry helped lead opposition to the drilling.
If Bush and his aides considered the power-grid section of the bill a priority, "they could pull it out
and pass it tomorrow," said Kerry's policy director, Sarah Bianchi.
Bush and Vice President Cheney say the stalled energy bill would increase drilling and offer tax
incentives to spur conservation, exploration and production. They blame Senate Democrats for
blocking it. "John Kerry and John Edwards voted no," Cheney said of Kerry and his running mate
Tuesday in Hot Springs, Ark. He called that "a significant difference" between the two tickets.
Bush promoted hydrogen cars in a State of the Union speech. In May, he said his administration
has raised fuel economy standards for large vehicles such as SUVs and set up a hotline to take
complaints about price gouging on gas.
Jason Schenker, an energy analyst at Wachovia Corp. in Charlotte said Kerry is vague on coal
research and a few other points but sets feasible goals and "offers better long-term solutions than the
energy policies of the current administration." He said Bush is too focused on coal, oil and gas and
isn't putting enough money into renewable fuel sources.
Kerry is announcing his plan in a week when the price of oil surged to a record $44.41 a barrel.
Analysts say that could mean higher gas prices later this month.
Go to Original
Are Power Plants Crying Wolf over Lawsuit?
By Chris Bowman
The Sacramento Bee
Monday 02 August 2004
As if environmental threats on his own turf weren't enough, Attorney General Bill Lockyer has
enlisted California to combat global warming gases from power plants as distant as Kentucky and
Florida.
The court battle barely has begun and already power industry officials are saying a win would
damage the economy by driving up energy costs for manufacturers and consumers.
At issue are emissions of carbon dioxide, the primary heat-trapping gas that alters the Earth's
temperature, and the nation's highest emitters of the gas - the old coal-fired power plants mainly in the
Midwest and the South. Owners of 170 of them are singled out in a June 21 lawsuit brought by
California, seven other states and New York City, all seeking a federal court order to cap and cut the
carbon dioxide emissions.
The electric power industry argues that the technology to capture these gases in the plant doesn't
yet exist, at least not at affordable prices.
The history of mandated pollution controls, however, suggests that the supposedly prohibitive costs
of cutting the climate-altering gases won't materialize.
Several documented cases in the power and automotive industries show that ingenuity and
adaptation - fueled by government mandates - spur the development of new technologies that cut
industry's cost of environmental protection. They also capture fuel savings.
"No matter how good a job modelers do in trying to predict outcomes, smart people running real
companies generally find cheaper ways to meet a goal once they actually need to, especially those
(rules) that allow companies maximum flexibility," said David Doniger, director of climate change
policy at the environmentalist Natural Resources Defense Council.
Still, it's a quantum leap for California to go from adding laws that put new pollution controls on
industries and new cars sold here to attempting to persuade courts to cap emissions on factories in
other states.
"Climate policy should be fashioned by policy-makers ... not by lawyers in the courtroom," said
Thomas Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute, the utility industry's main lobbying group.
The lawsuit seeks a court order requiring the nation's top five power producers to cut carbon dioxide
emissions every year for at least a decade, by an amount to be determined later by the court.
The targets are far from California: American Electric Power Co. Inc. in Columbus, Ohio; Cinergy
Corp. in Cincinnati; Xcel Energy Inc. of Minneapolis; the Tennessee Valley Authority; and the
Southern Co. of Atlanta.
Though the targeted smokestacks are hundreds if not thousands of miles away, the lawsuit ties
their emissions to the future economic, environmental and public well-being of California, Connecticut,
Iowa, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, Wisconsin and New York City.
The suit paints catastrophic scenarios from global warming, including increased flooding and water
shortages brought on by a diminishing Sierra snow pack, and a doubling of heat-related deaths in the
Los Angeles area.
Power industry officials also predict dire consequences if the lawsuit somehow succeeds.
"Forcing utilities to reduce greenhouse gases, including CO2, would cause electricity prices to
skyrocket for every business and homeowner in America," said Jeffrey Marks, spokesman for the
National Association of Manufacturers, which represents American Electric Power, Southern and
Cinergy.
Some economists said, however, that power companies, auto manufacturers and other regulated
industries routinely exaggerate the costs of environmental restrictions.
Case studies show that the environmental technology industry readily produces more efficient
pollution controls in response to new and anticipated government mandates, and that costs and
efficiencies improve as more companies adapt to the new rules.
"Costs almost always decline substantially once regulatory mandates are introduced and control
technologies are commercialized," says a September 2000 study commissioned by the Northeast
States for Coordinated Air Use Management, a government air pollution research and policy center.
The report writers reviewed case studies of pollution controls for power plants and automobiles.
In 1989, for example, the industry-funded Electric Power Research Institute said the power industry
would be paying $4.7 billion to $6.6 billion a year to comply with new Clean Air Act amendments to
reduce acid rain, by cutting sulfur dioxide emissions at coal-fired plants. By 1997, the electric
institute's estimate had fallen to $1.5 billion to $2.1 billion a year - "three to four times lower than the
figures widely cited in the congressional debates that shaped the 1990 amendments," the study
states.
Industry officials said the only feasible way to meaningfully cut carbon dioxide emissions would be
to switch from coal to more expensive natural gas, which burns more cleanly than coal.
"It would be ludicrous to even consider limiting the use of coal and other fossil fuels when
next-generation energy technologies aren't ready to drive our $12 trillion U.S. economy," Marks said.
Some environmental policy analysts, however, said this view ignores the technology-driving impact
of government-mandated pollution reductions.
An examination of the past 30 years' experience in controlling other major power plant emissions in
the United States, Japan and Western Europe consistently shows costs and performance improving
greatly over time as the cleanup technology matures, according to studies published this year by
public policy scholars at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and the University of California,
Berkeley.
Lead researchers Edward Rubin and Margaret Taylor said their findings portend similar success for
a new class of environmental technology that is not currently cost-effective but promises to
significantly cut global warming emissions without abandoning coal.
Called "carbon capture and sequestration," the technology involves capturing carbon dioxide from
coal combustion before it goes up the smokestack and storing the gases deep in the Earth - for
example, in depleted underground oil and gas reservoirs. The technology is one of the leading options
now being examined in climate policy studies.
Other, more readily available ways to reduce the climate-altering gases include industry
investments in commercial and residential energy conservation, use of wind and solar power, using
cleaner power plants more and dirtier plants less, and replacing the least-efficient plants.
Officials of companies named in the multistate lawsuit said they are achieving impressive emission
reductions without government mandates.
States participating in the lawsuit, however, have said that voluntary actions and government
financial incentives are inadequate.
Carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. electricity suppliers increased by more than 24 percent from
1990 to 2001, compared with a 16 percent increase in like emissions for the economy as a whole,
according to the suit.
"Clearly, voluntary actions aren't going to cut it," said Tom Dresslar, a spokesman for California
Attorney General Lockyer.
While industry focuses the debate on the increased costs of greenhouse gas controls to
consumers, the government attorneys argue passionately about the incalculable costs of doing too
little, too late to combat global climate change.
In California, those costs include a predicted worsening of smog and increased wildfire due to
hotter summers and the further spread of West Nile virus by mosquitoes.
Most worrisome is the shrinking of the mountain snow pack many scientists attribute to global
warming.
It is California's single largest source of drinking water, which is captured in reservoirs during the
spring runoff and distributed to California's 34 million residents so they can get by during the
six-month dry season.
"This process of reduced mountain snow pack, earlier melting and associated flooding and reduced
summer stream flows already has begun," the lawsuit states. |
