coal

Scholastic, Inc. publishes pro-coal curriculum for fourth graders, apparently paid for by coal industry

Yesterday, I wrote about a satirical campaign in which anti-coal activists spoofed a Peabody Energy website in order to publicize the link between burning coal and childhood asthma.   The satirical campaign included fake child-oriented games and discounted asthma inhalers. But all satire aside, the coal industry really is marketing its product directly to children. The …

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Anti-coal satire (with My First Inhaler) punks Peabody Energy

Peabody Energy — last seen on this blog as the real party in interest whose proposal to mine more coal on Indian land in Arizona had to go back to the drawing board because of this UCLA environmental law clinic case , and immortalized in the John Prine song “Paradise”  — has been punked.  (I’ve …

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India Coal Tax to be Used for Carbon Sinks and Clean Energy Technology

This is how you are supposed to do it.  Via the Hindu, Indian Finance Minister Mukherjee’s Budget uses carbon charges to combat climate change: The [tax] slapped on coal in last year’s budget will help pay for schemes to protect and regenerate forests and clean up polluted sites announced in this year’s Budget. Finance Minister Pranab …

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Obama’s 80% “Clean” Energy Goal: Ambitious or Inevitable?

In a recent post on Grist, Keith Schneider found President Obama’s 80% “clean” energy goal rather incredible: Arguably the central provision of President Obama’s State of the Union address last night was the proposal to generate 80 percent of the nation’s electricity from clean energy sources by 2035 — including nuclear energy and “carbon capture and …

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What to do about those coal plants we already have…

The California Public Utilities Commission looked pretty good, back in 2007, when it created a rule prohibiting utilities from making new long-term investments in power plants emitting more carbon dioxide than an efficient natural gas plant. That meant no new conventional coal plants, which emit twice as much carbon dioxide as a natural gas plant. …

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Mountaintop Removal: Incompatible with Climate Solutions and Incompatible with the Environment

Monday thousands of people converged on Washington, D.C. for the Appalachia Rising Rally to protest mountaintop removal (MTR) coal mining.  Activists dumped 1,000 pounds of Appalachia dirt on EPA’s front lawn before marching on the White House.  At a sit-in at PNC bank, four people were arrested while protesting that bank’s financing of MTR coal mining. …

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Energy Policy: Kicking Butt and Taking Names

Steve, you write: This is not just about ceiling insulation and more heat-reflective roofs.  It also has to do with the ability of electric generators to convert heat to power, the elimination of line losses from the transmission grid, and the improvement of fuel delivery systems to avoid leakage.  It has to do with strategic …

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What a Waste of Energy

The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has issued its annual snapshot of our national energy use, based on data collected by the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Agency.  The good news is that we used less energy in 2009 than we did in 2008 (almost all of the savings probably attributable to the still-weak economy).  The …

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India Puts US Climate Policy to Shame

While US policymakers — particularly Republicans and  those in coal states — are busy complaining about developing countries not capping their carbon emissions, New Delhi is busy actually doing something about climate change. Two weeks ago, India instituted a tax on coal, instituting a form of carbon tax that talented advocates (such as the good …

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New bill in Congress by Rockefeller (S. 3072) would delay regulation of GHGs under the Clean Air Act

As Cara and I have already discussed in detail, the Environmental Protection Agency has committed to delay the rollout of regulation of stationary sources of greenhouse gas emissions under the Clean Air Act, and to regulate only the very largest sources. This backtracking from EPA has been a response to efforts by Senator Lisa Murkowski …

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