RFK Jr. Blasts Obama as 'Indentured Servant' to Coal Industry
(Note : all links are original to the article, i.e. not mine)"Clean coal is a dirty lie," says environmentalist Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who calls President Barack Obama and other politicians who commit taxpayer money to develop it "indentured servants" of the coal industry.
Despite a series of expensive false starts and failures, President Obama proposed $3.4 billion in stimulus legislation to fund continued research on "clean coal" projects.
"Clean coal is like healthy cigarettes, it does not exist," says former Vice President Al Gore.
The coal industry has been running a multi-million dollar advertising blitz to promote the theory that coal can be made clean, using one of Obama's campaign speeches in its television commercials.
Click here to see the coal industry's commercials featuring President Obama.
"You can't tell me we can't figure out a way to burn coal that we mine right here in the United States and make it work," says Obama in the commercial, which ends with on-screen words: Yes We Can.
The "clean coal" theory is that coal's dangerous global warming gas, carbon dioxide, can be captured and sent by pipeline to be buried deep in the earth.
"It is the dirtiest of all fuels that we know of," said Bruce Nilles of the Sierra Club, which says talk of "clean coal" is designed to put off efforts to wean the country off coal.
"Today in the United States, most of the pollution is coming from coal burning power plants," said Nilles.
After 24 years and billions of dollars spent trying, there is still no operating coal power plant using "clean coal" technology.
Clearly Obama won't let science and reality get in the way of his pandering to the filthy, environmentally-reckless coal-as-energy industry and, of course, those states profiting from its extraction, sale, and burning....# 2 of which is....(surprise!!)...ILLINOIS, followed by other coal-producing states critical to Obama's (re-)election such as WV (# 4), PA (# 6), OH (#7), and Indiana (#10).
I would like to think Obama is just terribly-misguided or ignorant and thus susceptible to correction on his intent to proliferate coal burning, "clean" or otherwise. But I suspect it is more about calculated, cynical, self-serving selectivity in his environmental/energy policies.
If you want to know about how "clean" coal will ever be, ask the coal miners and survey the geological rape left behind, all over the planet.
It's not just all about the tons upon tons of coal ash left over (which, for example, the corrupt government of Wilmington has colluded with polluters to mix with sludge) nor what comes out the smoke stacks...
Comments
And a working demonstration of "clean coal" technology has been non-existent since the term was invented, much less its "commercial viability".
By no means does my position on coal mean I agree with Al Gore or any of his "pipe dreams". Cap-and-trade is a mother-frigging abomination.