Word: carbonated
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...touting the benefits of "clean coal" power, sponsored by the industry group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity. (The ads featured lumps of coal plugged into an electrical cord.) Designed in part to respond to the growing green campaign against coal power - which accounts for about 30% of U.S. carbon emissions - the ads promised high-tech and eventually carbon-free power, emphasizing coal's low cost compared to alternatives, its abundance in America and its cleanliness...
...clean coal" campaign was always more PR than reality - currently there's no economical way to capture and sequester carbon emissions from coal, and many experts doubt there ever will be. But now the idea of clean coal might be truly dead, buried beneath the 1.1 billion gallons of water mixed with toxic coal ash that on Dec. 22 burst through a dike next to the Kingston coal plant in the Tennessee Valley and blanketed several hundred acres of land, destroying nearby houses. The accident - which released 100 times more waste than the Exxon Valdez disaster - has polluted the waterways...
That's because, even putting aside climate change-accelerating carbon dioxide, coal remains a highly polluting source of electricity that has serious impacts on human health, especially among those who live near major plants. Take coal ash, a solid byproduct of burned coal. A draft report last year by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) found that the ash contains significant levels of carcinogens, and that the concentration of arsenic in ash, should it contaminate drinking water, could increase cancer risks by several hundred times. A 2006 report by the National Research Council had similar findings. "This is hazardous waste...
...pollution from coal - remain external, paid for not by utilities or coal companies but society as a whole. The coal industry itself estimates that taking better care of fly ash could cost as much as $5 billion a year - and if the government imposed a tax or cap on carbon dioxide, the price of coal would certainly rise. "For all the money the industry has spent to mislead the public, [Kingston] shows that there really is no such thing as clean and cheap coal in the U.S," says Bruce Nilles, the director of the Sierra Club's National Coal Campaign...
...financed in part by borrowing against future user fees, like tolls on roads and higher electricity rates for more reliable and cleaner power, rather than against general government revenues. This strategy can probably cover as much as 1% of GDP per year. We can introduce new taxes on the carbon emissions from coal, oil and gas to hasten our transition to sustainable energy. For example, instead of letting gasoline prices tumble now only to see them soar again shortly, we could set a floor on prices at the pump and collect the difference between the wholesale and retail prices...