Clean coal is not the answer
Filed Under Big Ideas, Environment, TheMCP
This is a post about clean coal technology. It is also about how the carbon debate has hijacked the ecological movement as a whole.
As the TVA disaster showed us, any fuel that requires the removal of mountaintops will never be “clean” in any legitimate sense — no matter how deep you bury whatever’s left over after you burn it.
The phrase “clean coal technology” is a weasel phrase — like “enhanced interrogation techniques.” It moves the argument away from the known world and into a fuzzy realm of make believe, where coal-reliant energy companies can comfortably spin maybes all day long.
There aren’t enough maybes in “carbon sequestration and storage” to put the top of a single mountain back on after it’s been dumped into a local watershed.
The carbon debate is a huge double-edged battle-axe for environmentalists. Today, most debate about the health of our environment swings on how much CO2 gets pumped into the air.
Because of this sudden narrowing of the debate, anyone who can marginally reduce the amount of carbon they produce in a morning is suddenly a big environmentalist, even if they spend the rest of the afternoon clubbing baby seals.
It’s sad, because there’s an opportunity for a shift in the way we think about the world we live in. But despite all the we-are-the-world-flowers-and-sunshine-and-green-pastel-paint that everyone from Monsanto to Enron is sporting nowadays (my gas station has a flower painted on it!) our main problems remain the same.
We still act like we can treat the ecosystem like a factory. Alter this input here, tweak this output there, and voila!: a perfectly comfortable planet where the temperature never exceeds 70 degrees and it only rains when you want to stay inside and read Oprah’s latest book of the month.
IBM is running a television ad extolling us to “build a smarter planet.” Have we learned nothing from Jeff Goldblum?
Even if we could clean up coal, replace all of our power with wind turbines, and beam electricity by microwave from orbiting satellites… there would still be another problem (and another and another) waiting for us– so long as we fail to tackle the actual problem and not the mere symptoms: our insatiable demand for more stuff.
We are, understandably, attracted by large, sweeping technological overhauls as a means by which the planet will be saved. The real solutions aren’t as sexy as a redesigned battery or a more efficient wind turbine. But while we spend untold zillions upgrading our grid, we mostly need to find ways to reduce the national ecological (not just carbon) footprint. By turning things off, eating locally produced food, and driving less, we could reduce not only the number of fossil fuels burned but also a number of other major environmental problems. We could also all stand to use a little less plastic.
Those kinds of “fixes” require a small sacrifice, but the payoff could conceivably be big. Small, individually ineffectual changes (growing a little produce, putting a timer on your water heater) pile up. The world might not be saved by recycling, but part of it will be.
The energy companies think Americans can’t make sacrifices, but I’m not that cynical. We have a long history of knuckling down and fixing huge national problems. But we unfortuantely also have a history of needing a charismatic figure to point the way – we are a nation of trend-followers after all.
A lot of debate is going into what the great replacement for coal is going to be – Michael Tomasky recently posted a great rundown of what a less coal-reliant future might look like both for the U.S. and for states like West Virginia for whom mining creates the most jobs. My biggest problem with his assessment (which is very fair and realistic) is the assumption that the goal of our energy policy should be to make sure we can continue to consume as much power (and goods) as we currently do.
Comments
One Response to “Clean coal is not the answer”
Clean coal technology definitely isn’t the answer but it’s definitely on the way.