Big Coal
-
Big Coal and Oil Play Dirty but EPA Mercury Ruling Proves We’d Rather Keep It Clean
Starting today, we can begin to breathe, eat, and drink a bit easier. The EPA begins enforcement of the Mercury and Air Toxics standard, a 20-year-old mandate that set limits on mercury emissions from coal and oil-fired power plants. These safeguards are not for show. They reflect a raft of highly credible research proving that mercury, […]
-
![]()
![]()
Don’t you dare blow up this mountain: Defending a historic spot against Big Coal [VIDEO]
Hundreds of activists from around the country joined local unionized coal miners in standing up to the coal industry last week, marching for five days and 50 miles through West Virginia. Their protest culminated on Saturday at Blair Mountain, the site of a violent clash in 1921 between 15,000 striking coal miners and a hired […]
-
![]()
![]()
Behind the scenes in the big fight against coal
Down with coal!The climate fight hasn’t been going well lately. The Copenhagen conference in Dec. 2009 seemed to mark the effective end of international efforts to control carbon. The U.S. Senate couldn’t even bring itself to vote on cap-and-trade last summer. In November, a GOP committed to climate denial won new strength in the Congress. […]
-
![]()
![]()
Court gives green light to EPA carbon pollution standards
Big news: The Supreme Court just gave the green light to implementing the EPA's first carbon pollution standards.
-
![]()
![]()
The Climate Post: Climate scientists: It’s war
700 climate scientists agreed to speak out as experts about global warming. Plus, coal enjoys November and the Copenhagen failure costs $1 trillion.
-
![]()
![]()
Old King Coal's on a merry old roll
Don't be fooled by the whining that the Obama administration is on the verge of wiping out the coal industry. Big coal is as powerful as ever.
-
![]()
![]()
A question for James Fallows about coal and focus
I waded into "Dirty Coal, Clean Future," James Fallows' new cover piece for The Atlantic, prepared to be outraged, what with coal being the enemy of the human race and all. But it turns out to be an incredibly cogent, accessible walk through some extremely vexed issues. Still I can't help wonder why he put the focus on coal's necessity rather than its evil.
-
![]()
![]()
King Coal wins the midterms
In the final year of his remarkable life, Robert C. Byrd, the longest serving senator in US history, did one more remarkable thing. He called for serious dialogue on coal, climate change and the effects of mountaintop removal mining. “To deny the mounting science of climate change is to stick our heads in the sand and say 'deal me out,'” Byrd told his fellow West Virginians late in 2009. And on the EPA’s efforts to rein in the most egregious damage from mountaintop removal, he said, “West Virginians may demonstrate anger towards the EPA…but we risk the very probable consequence of shouting ourselves out of any productive dialogue.” Briefly, there was hope that the mountain state’s elder statesman might pull local politics away from a dead-end logic. Very briefly. Sen. Byrd died in June. By October, the man who would replace him in the Senate thumbed his nose at Byrd’s desire for reasoned discourse and picked up a gun.
-
![]()
![]()
'A coup d'etat against the carbon cronies': chatting with Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a lifelong environmentalist, a lawyer, an author, a cleantech backer, a falconer, a whitewater rafter, president of the Waterkeeper Alliance, a senior attorney and frequent spokesperson for NRDC, and a vigorous political campaigner. Other than that he's kind of a layabout. I caught up with him in San Francisco, where we chatted about ... well, mostly about how things are going to hell. But also other stuff!
