Pander Bears In Pennsylvania

Western Pennsylvania has a large coal region, particularly around the Appalachian chain. And West Virginia is on the horizon. This has transformed into an opportunity for both candidates to talk about liquid coal and generally include coal in "clean energy" solutions.

Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) told an NPR affiliate in West Virginia Wednesday that we need to “make sure that coal plays a major role” in the future and when asked about mountaintop removal, said “maybe there is a way to recover once they have been stripped of the coal.” Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) told a crowd in West Virginia Thursday that “clean coal jobs” are “green jobs.”

Mountaintop removal not only shocks the conscience, it bleeds jobs from the region and unecessarily disrupts the environment. Liquid coal projects, which the Air Force wants to run their planes on, are very bad for the environment, generating a ton of carbon dioxide per BARREL of fuel. And "clean coal" is just a misnomer, a name for something that does not now exist and arguably never will:

“Clean coal” is a shorthand term for “technologies designed to enhance both the efficiency and the environmental acceptability of coal extraction, preparation and use.” This includes established technologies used to capture methane emitted during coal mining and to “wash” coal before it is burned to separate toxic impurities, as well as technologies to capture and geologically store its greenhouse emissions (CCS) that are “expensive, experimental and not in commercial use.”

The coal industry, with the assistance of the current administration, has been fighting regulations to establish or enforce the use of existing technologies to reduce traditional air pollutants produced by coal-burning like mercury and sulfur dioxide. In climate scientist James Hansen’s analysis, the only way to avoid climate catastrophe is to establish “an immediate moratorium on additional coal-fired power plants without CCS.”

No matter how advanced coal technology becomes, a coal-industry job is simply not in the same class of ecological responsibility as one that involves renewable energy or actually restores carbon and health to the soil.

It's primary season (still) and I expect a certain amount of regionally-focused pandering, but for two candidates that actually have very good energy policies, to talk about "clean coal" and liquid coal projects in this facile and self-serving way kind of hurts. How about telling the truth for the change, or boldly promoting congestion pricing or a corporate carbon tax, giving the appropriate seriousness to the task of mitigating the effects of global warming? We're beyond the point with the climate that we can afford these little white lies.

UPDATE: Grist has more. And I do appreciate Obama's proposed active role in the oil markets, for what it's worth.