Coal’s false promise to America

According to a recent report by the National Coal Council, an advisory board to the Department of Energy that is dominated by coal executives, if America invested $211 billion in coal-to- liquids refineries over the next 20 years, it could make 2.6 million barrels of diesel per day, enhancing the American oil supply by 10 percent. A number of coal- to-liquids plants are on the drawing boards in the United States, and China is eagerly pursuing this technology too. But let’s consider the wisdom of substituting one fossil fuel for another. We already burn a billion tons of coal a year – it generates more than half the electricity in the United States. But thanks to ever bigger, more powerful equipment, mining is destroying vast swaths of Appalachia while providing fewer well- paying jobs. If we simply increase consumption, we will be condemning large areas of the country, including eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia, to national sacrifice zones.

The biggest problem with America’s bounty of coal is not what it does to our mountains or the atmosphere, but what it does to our minds.
International Herald Tribune