BLOG

Environmental vandalism, clean coal and climate change

-- Amanda Meade -- 09/30/2008

The Greenpeace climate change activist’s story sparked an interesting debate over tactics and sucked Al Gore into a vortex of criticism over a comment on civil disobedience last week. From a global warming and clean energy perspective, Gore is right that there is no way to operate a "clean coal" plant, and maybe the only way to get governments to wake up is civil disobedience. The resistance to addressing climate change and facing a new energy reality is strong in some corners of public opinion.

So what will it take to raise awareness and create a consensus for action to stop the status quo of building coal fired plants? How will we get clean energy into the dominant mind set for solutions?  

It’s a difficult question when the coal industry and their National Mining Association lobbyists muddle the debate by convincing congress to give them tens of billions of subsidized government dollars to keep digging and polluting, and then complain that clean energy isn't competitive in the free market. They also spend a hefty amount on advertising to hypnotize Americans into believing their green washing commercials promoting “clean coal”, although no such technology exists.

There are no easy answers or shortcuts to starting the long process of transformation to clean energy. The good news is there is an opportunity along the way to revitalize the economy by creating jobs and taking action on climate change while we restructure the energy grid with geothermal, wind and solar capabilities. We need to shift our whole countries way of thinking from the fossil fuel past and focus on the clean energy future.

We especially need leaders to stand up and fight for transforming our economy out of the polluting 20th century of the coal lobby type of thinking and invest in new clean energy for the 21st. We can't wait. And if elected representatives only listen to the big energy companies who have no incentive to change, then activists must do something to get their attention. That's Al Gore's point, and that's why the UK courts let environmental vandalism go unpunished - because they were right.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Clean_Coal_Technology

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Americans_for_Balanced_Energy_Choices