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Global warming has a new battleground: coal plants
Judy Pasternak, Los Angeles Times
Every time a new coal-fired power plant is proposed anywhere in the United States, a lawyer from the Sierra Club or an allied environmental group is assigned to stop it, by any bureaucratic or legal means necessary.
They might frame the battle as a matter of zoning or water use, but the larger war is over global warming: Coal puts twice as much temperature-raising carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as natural gas, second to coal as the most common power plant fuel.
The plant-by-plant strategy is part of a campaign by environmentalists to force the federal government to deal with climate change. The fights are scattered from Georgia to Wyoming, from Illinois to Texas, but the ultimate target is Washington, where the Bush administration has resisted placing limits on carbon dioxide and Congress has yet to act on a global warming bill.
The campaign against new coal-powered plants has infuriated utilities, which say the environmentalists’ tactics are an abuse of the regulatory and judicial systems. They are counterpunching with ads, lobbying and court briefs of their own, bringing the clash over coal to a pitch that rivals the environmental and legal fights over nuclear power decades ago.
(14 April 2008)
For Navajos, coal means survival
Ryan Randazzo, The Arizona Republic
Navajo Nation leaders are well aware that coal has fallen from favor in thisage of global warming. But to them, plans for a new power plant on the reservation mean more than rising temperatures and climate patterns.
To them it is survival.
The proposed Desert Rock Energy Project in northwestern New Mexico could add $50 million in revenue to their annual budget of about $130 million, excluding government contracts, and bring 1,000 construction jobs and 400 permanent positions to the plant and expanded mine.
Environmentalists on and off the reservation are fighting the plans, saying that the region already suffers enough air pollution from existing coal plants and mines. They say the poverty-stricken tribe could see a bigger economic boost from developing wind and solar energy.
(13 April 2008
Coalfields Turn Into (Political) Battlefields
Stephen Power and Nick Timiraos, Wall Street Journal
Push for New Plants
Divides Democrats
In Rural, City Areas
—-
The race for the Democratic nomination hinges on a handful of states where coal is still king. That puts Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama in a bind: how to attack global warming without threatening an industry that provides half the U.S.’s electricity and more than 80,000 mining jobs.
Campaigning in the Pennsylvania presidential primary this month, Senators Clinton and Obama are championing technology to capture and store carbon-dioxide emissions from coal — while vowing to invest in renewable energies such as wind and solar power.
“Coal is going to remain a major player in American energy,” Senator Clinton told the Pittsburgh Business Times last month.
“We are the Saudi Arabia of coal, and it could be a very important way for us to meet our long-term energy needs,” Senator Obama told voters Wednesday in Levittown, Pa.
The candidates’ comments reflect a broader challenge for Democrats, as efforts to build coal-fired plants pit Democrats in struggling rural areas against city and suburban dwellers worried about climate change.
(14 April 2008)
