“Clean coal” is a magnificent oxymoron, one that rivals “jumbo shrimp” for top honors.
There is nothing clean about strip mining in the west, leaving hundreds of square miles devoid of all life. Or about blowing up mountaintops in the east and shoving the rubble into river valleys. Or about underground mining, with miners dying slowly of lung disease or quickly from cave-ins.
There is nothing clean about spewing hundreds of tons of dirty particles into the atmosphere to drift about before finally settling on earth’s cities, farms and wild lands. Or about carbon dioxide creating acid rain and enhancing the greenhouse effect that contributes to global warming.
And there is nothing clean about millions of acres of dark toxic sludge waiting to break free of inadequate containment, to bury towns and valleys and to pollute rivers.
I’m sorry, President Obama, but there is no such thing as “clean coal.”
Adele E. Zimmermann
Embudo