Sep 24 2008
Coal Is Killing You … Softly (and Slowly)
Sen. Joe Biden flatly stated that coal is killing you, just months after Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said it’s making us sick. So what about it? Is coal killing us?
We doubt anyone would suggest huffing coal particulates for kicks and giggles, and if they did, it would be best not to heed their call. But here’s something that Senators Biden and Reid may have missed, probably because they are not on the Senate committee overseeing the Department of Health and Human Services.
Here’s a little factoid: Our life expectancies are at an all-time high. Here’s the recap from the Washington Post in June:
The overall U.S. life expectancy of 78.1 years was up 0.3 years from 2005. Life expectancy for women was 80.7 years, and for men, 75.4 years. The disparity between the sexes — 5.3 years — has been declining since it peaked at about eight years in 1979.
No, coal isn’t going to kill us. But the rhetoric might. (Or, is it the silent, sneaky killer that actually makes us live longer so we won’t figure out that it’s killing us?)
Why is the media so up in arms about an off-the-cuff comment Biden made while they’re not reporting anything about McCain’s long-term and sustained attack on coal jobs?
John McCain has been on the attack against the coal industry for years, starting with legislation he proposed in 2003–Senate Bill 139, the Climate Stewardship Act of 2003–that would have just about wiped out the coal industry in the United States.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration released an analysis of S. 139 in May, 2004, which said the reductions in coal production under the McCain legislation was estimated to be 78 percent by 2025. Since it takes coal miners to produce coal, that would mean a drastic reduction in employment, most of which would have fallen heavily on more labor-intensive mines like we have in Appalachia.
But Sen. McCain was just getting warmed up. He teamed up with Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) just last year and proposed climate change legislation–Senate Bill 280–that once again took a meat-axe approach to Appalachian coal. In that bill, McCain specifically targeted Appalachian coal production for cuts of 30 percent or more, while encouraging production of coal from Wyoming, according to an analysis done of the legislation by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Both Obama and McCain have proposed a variety of solutions to dealing with energy issues. They both say that they want to reduce reliance on foreign sources of energy and build an infrastructure in America that relies on a mix of sources to meet the ever-expanding energy needs of our nation, while at the same time reducing greenhouse gases.
But the devil is in the details, and once again Sen. McCain doesn’t measure up when it comes to the potential for coal–our nation’s most abundant energy resource–to continue to be the major contributor to meeting our future energy needs.
The kicker of McCain’s energy plan is to build 45 new nuclear plants across America by 2025, the first wave of 100 new nuclear plants he foresees. The negative impact on coal production and jobs from these plants will be extremely significant. And let’s face it–no matter what happens with respect to climate change over the next 50 to 100 years, the waste generated by a nuclear plant tomorrow will still be deadly to all life 10,000 years from now. Our distant descendants will likely be worrying about staying warm during the next ice age about then.
With the coming development of clean coal technologies like carbon capture and storage (CCS), America is on the brink of being able to use coal to generate energy without contributing any more greenhouse gases to the environment. Sen. McCain pays lip service to CCS, but the record shows that coal has a very limited future in John McCain’s vision of America.
Sen. Barack Obama, on the other hand, is from a coal state and clearly understands the long-term role coal can play in our nation’s energy future. He has pledged to fund development of CCS technology so that it can be deployed as soon as possible. He has said that America is the “Saudi Arabia of coal” and that we ought to be working as hard as we can to figure out how to use it for decades to come.
So the choice for coal miners, their families, their neighbors and everyone living in the coalfield communities throughout the coalfields of the U.S. Barack Obama is for the long-term future of your job and John McCain is not. Keep that in mind when you vote on Nov. 4.
Oh no, coal is going to kill us. Scary stuff. I hope Reid and Biden know that eating too much junk food, driving too fast, flying in airplanes, and a host of about 10,000 other things can all kill us. Do they want to ban them all too?
This is what I hate about liberals, everything is a crisis or an emergency and of course the only solution is more government. I would rather take my chances in the world without the Nanny state trying to protect me.
To quote “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”:
I’m not dead yet!
Health problems are nothing to laugh at. Rising temperatures do create more health problems, like increasing asthma rates and more airborne bacteria spreading diseases. And the fact is that burning coal does put carbon, which traps heat, in the atmosphere, which raises temperatures around the world. So by burning more coal we are contributing to health problems. Now do politicians sometimes get carried away, sure, but we should ignore science because of their stupid statements.