Word: coale
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Politicians often succumb to the constant pressure for a stirring personal anecdote. During his abortive run for the presidency in 1987, solidly suburban Senator Joseph Biden appropriated scenes from the coal-mining boyhood of British Labour Party leader Neil Kinnock. To make a point about welfare dependency, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said his sister was once so dependent on handouts she would get "mad when the mailman [was] late with her check." In fact, she worked most of her life...
...ambitious proposal: industrial nations should cut their emissions 15% below 1990 levels by the year 2010. Easy for them to say: Europe relies heavily on emission-free nuclear power. Besides, the collapse of the former East Germany's antiquated industries and a massive switchover in Great Britain from coal to natural gas during the 1990s have given Europe a big head start toward that goal...
...marketing a new generation of micro-power plants small enough to fit in your basement. Not only do they generate electricity, but their excess heat warms the house. These new-age power plants are based on tiny engines and produce electricity less expensively than multibillion-dollar coal and nuclear plants...
...entrepreneurial start-up companies, many of them financed with venture capital. But as business has boomed in the past two years, major corporations have jumped in. The lure is obvious: the use of wind and solar power is growing more than 25% a year, while the markets for coal and oil are expanding only...
Although many economists argue that it will be difficult and expensive to find an alternative to oil and coal--and that we should delay the transition for as long as possible--their position is based on a technological pessimism that seems out of place today. The first automobiles and computers were difficult to use and expensive, but the pioneers persevered and made improvements, and ultimately triumphed in the marketplace...