Energy News | How to end America’s deadly coal addiction, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

A coal plant during a regular burn cycle.How to end America’s deadly coal addiction

Converting rapidly from coal-generated energy to gas is President Barack Obama’s most obvious first step towards saving our planet and jump-starting our economy. A revolution in natural gas production over the past two years has left America awash with natural gas and has made it possible to eliminate most of our dependence on deadly, destructive coal practically overnight – and without the expense of building new power plants.

Whatever the slick campaign financed by the powerful coal barons might claim, coal is neither cheap nor clean. Ozone and particulates from coal plants kill tens of thousands of Americans each year and cause widespread illnesses and disease. Acid rain has destroyed millions of acres of valuable forests and sterilised one in five Adirondack lakes. Neurotoxic mercury raining from these plants has contaminated fish in every state and poisons over a million American women and children annually. Coal industry strip mines have already destroyed 500 mountains in Appalachia, buried 2,000 miles of rivers and streams and will soon have flattened an area the size of Delaware. Finally, coal, which supplies 46 per cent of our electric power, is the most important source of America’s greenhouse gases.

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2 Responses to “How to end America’s deadly coal addiction, by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.”

  1. haynesville says:

    This is really interesting. A few people have asked me about this. Is there a place you can post that would have more info on this?

  2. Additionally, sequestering CO2 would not make coal more acceptable. For one thing, aside from being extremely expensive, there’s something called Tectonic Plates in the Earth’s surface which shift causing trimmers and Earth Quakes. When (not if) these violent movements occur they cause “faults” in the earth’s crust. CO2 stored in depleted reservoirs can migrate along these fault-lines up to the surface. If this happened on a large scale there would be a sudden enormous discharge of CO2 into the atmosphere which would drastically increase Green House gases causing rapid changes in our weather.

    Thomas C. Gandolfo
    Asheville, NC