Falling Behind

The value of a planned economy: no need for debates that can be hijacked by the forces of regress.

As the United States takes its first steps toward mandating that power companies generate more electricity from renewable sources, China already has a similar requirement and is investing billions to remake itself into a green energy superpower.

Through a combination of carrots and sticks, Beijing is starting to change how this country generates energy. Although coal remains the biggest energy source and is almost certain to stay that way, the rise of renewable energy, especially wind power, is helping to slow China’s steep growth in emissions of global warming gases [...]

This year China is on track to pass the United States as the world’s largest market for wind turbines — after doubling wind power capacity in each of the last four years. State-owned power companies are competing to see which can build solar plants fastest, though these projects are much smaller than the wind projects. And other green energy projects, like burning farm waste to generate electricity, are sprouting up.

To be clear, I don't SUPPORT the kind of totalitarianism evident in China, easier though it may make the transition to renewable energy. I wish that Republicans in this country would figure out that our value to the global economy lies in innovation and entrepreneurship, which is far more flexible here than in China, and if they would only allow it to flourish, America could easily become a world leader on this front. As it is, China uses its buying power and the relative alacrity with which they can turn the ship of state to crush us.

The article contains good news for the planet, and that supersedes the depressing news it augurs for this country's role in the post-American world, but it's frustrating to watch.

...meanwhile, in exceptional America, it takes months of browbeating for the EPA to reveal all the sites where coal ash can get into drinking water, rivers and streams.

Look At That, Another Horrible Spill Of An Unregulated Coal Ash Dump!

On the same day that the Senate holds an oversight hearing on the terrible fly ash spill in Tennessee, we have another spill in Alabama.

TVA is investigating a leak from a gypsum pond at its Widows Creek coal-burning power plant in northeastern Alabama, a spokesman said at about 10:45 a.m. Central Time.

The leak, discovered before 6 a.m. has been stopped, according to John Moulton, with the Tennessee Valley Authority.

We've heard that before in these cases. The problem is that it leaked at all, and that it's seemingly nobody's responsibility.

Not to mention leak #3:

Efforts to repair one of a series of dams on the [Ocoee] river released sediment into the rocky channel … a section of the Ocoee River Gorge — a world-renowned location for whitewater sports and site of Olympic competition during the 1996 Atlanta games — was about half-filled with black, foul-smelling muck,

“It’s inexcusable. If that had happened during the summer when the river was full of people that could have been a real disaster.”

Yeah. Could have been. As if it isn't now.

Sen. Boxer called for the EPA to regulate this waste so that Big Coal cannot escape its responsibilities anymore.

For nearly three decades, EPA has been looking at the issue of how to regulate combustion waste. The federal government has the power to regulate these wastes, and inaction has allowed this enormous volume of toxic material to go largely unregulated. State efforts are very inconsistent, and as more and more toxic material is removed from coal combustion, it is critically important that protective standards for coal ash waste be established.

I intend to work with the incoming Obama Administration to ensure that the necessary action is taken to protect our public health and the environment.

The disaster in Tennessee proves the point that we cannot avoid the costs associated with managing coal ash, and that it is far better to invest in preventing disasters like this than spending even more to clean them up.

More significantly, Lamar Alexander, the Republican from Tennessee, called coal "a dirty business". A Democrat is a Republican who's had millions of gallons of crap tossed into his state's rivers.

No. More. Coal.

Dirty Little Secret

It turns out that those giant ponds of coal ash, toxic sludge created by coal-fired power plants, which can pour into local reservoirs and contaminate drinking water, are unmonitored and unregulated.

The coal ash pond that ruptured and sent a billion gallons of toxic sludge across 300 acres of East Tennessee last month was only one of more than 1,300 similar dumps across the United States — most of them unregulated and unmonitored — that contain billions more gallons of fly ash and other byproducts of burning coal.

Like the one in Tennessee, most of these dumps, which reach up to 1,500 acres, contain heavy metals like arsenic, lead, mercury and selenium, which are considered by the Environmental Protection Agency to be a threat to water supplies and human health. Yet they are not subject to any federal regulation, which experts say could have prevented the spill, and there is little monitoring of their effects on the surrounding environment.

This is a function of effective regulation of smokestacks and air pollution - the coal companies are just moving the pollution to a hidden corner away from regulator's prying eyes.

The amount of coal ash has ballooned in part because of increased demand for electricity, but more because air pollution controls have improved. Contaminants and waste products that once spewed through the coal plants’ smokestacks are increasingly captured in the form of solid waste, held in huge piles in 46 states, near cities like Pittsburgh, St. Louis and Tampa, Fla., and on the shores of Lake Erie, Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River.

Numerous studies have shown that the ash can leach toxic substances that can cause cancer, birth defects and other health problems in humans, and can decimate fish, bird and frog populations in and around ash dumps, causing developmental problems like tadpoles born without teeth, or fish with severe spinal deformities.

“Your household garbage is managed much more consistently” than coal combustion waste, said Dr. Thomas A. Burke, an epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, who testified on the health effects of coal ash before a Congressional subcommittee last year. “It’s such a large volume of waste, and it’s so essential to the country’s energy supply; it’s basically been a loophole in the country’s waste management strategy.”

The loophole is actually allowing coal-fired power plants to continue to exist. The incident in Tennessee is among the worst-case scenarios, but with more power generation from coal, it's inevitable. And over half of Americans live within 30 miles of one of these kinds of power plants.

Enough. We need to shut down coal plants in the name of public health. The massive PR machine that the coal industry bakrolled to the tune of $45 million last year is pernicious and threatens the safety of the nation. There is no clean coal. Only sick people.

Dirty Coal Creates More Suffering

That horrible coal ash spill in Tennessee is proving to be even bigger than expected.

Officials at the authority initially said that about 1.7 million cubic yards of wet coal ash had spilled when the earthen retaining wall of an ash pond at the Kingston Fossil Plant, about 40 miles west of Knoxville, gave way on Monday. But on Thursday they released the results of an aerial survey that showed the actual amount was 5.4 million cubic yards, or enough to flood more than 3,000 acres one foot deep.

The amount now said to have been spilled is larger than the amount the authority initially said was in the pond, 2.6 million cubic yards.

A test of river water near the spill showed elevated levels of lead and thallium, which can cause birth defects and nervous and reproductive system disorders, said John Moulton, a spokesman for the T.V.A., which owns the electrical generating plant, one of the authority’s largest.

Some would call it "larger" than the amount originally thought to be in the pond, others would say "twice as much." And now it's in the drinking water.

Coal ash (or fly ash) is really nasty stuff, with multiple carcinogens and heavy metals and even radioactive elements like uranium and thorium contained in it, all of which can create a public health hazard. In addition, it's generated when coal is burned, and no matter what is done with the carbon, the residue remains and must be put into landfills or captured and stored at the plant. Power plants generated 71.1 million tons of fly ash in 2005. Incredibly, some of it is recycled and used in things like footpaths, leading to contamination. But I don't think we've ever seen levels like this released, and certainly not into a reservoir. Scientific American has more.

Regardless of whether we have developed "clean coal" technology to mitigate the effects of carbon, the problem of fly ash would persist. Which is why it is so stupid for prominent politicians, including the President-elect to speak laudably of the promise of clean coal. I just saw an ad this week featuring Barack Obama put together by the coal industry, using campaign footage of him in coal country:

"Clean coal technology is something that can make America energy independent!...We put a man on the moon in 10 years. You can't tell me we can't figure out a way to burn coal that we mine right here in the United States of America and make it work!"

There's campaign rhetoric that is relatively harmless and there's this validation of a dirty industry that has very real effects. Big Coal spent $45 million dollars this year to promote their product, which is currently to blame for one of the biggest environmental disasters in American history. Coal is not clean, nor will it ever be. Anyone who says otherwise is part of the problem.