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Week 6: August 14, 2006
Focus on: |
 The coal industry has used an expensive ad campaign to tell us that coal is cheap,
plentiful, and now even "clean." It certainly is plentiful, but it's
only cheap if you don't consider the costs to public health, our environment,
climate, miners’ health and safety, and damage to lands across Appalachia
and the West from highly destructive mining practices. The industry talks a big
talk about so-called "clean coal," but 84 percent of the 150 or so new coal
plants on the drawing board in the U.S. are the same old-fashioned, low-tech
dirty
coal plants they've been building for decades -- and none will capture
the carbon dioxide that causes global warming. Suddenly coal looks like just
another dirty, outdated technology that's a bad deal for America at a time
when we need to invest our resources in the smart energy solutions that will
help us move past fossil fuels and fight global warming.
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