There is no such thing as "Clean Coal"

Seriously people, can we have an honest dialogue about this? I know there are legitimate reasons for us to continue to use coal for economic, strategic, and basic common-sense arguments, but there is not, I repeat, there is not an environmental argument in favor of the use of coal. 

Anyone who says otherwise is trying to feed you a lie. And the lie is conveniently labeled as "clean coal". Politicians like this term because it makes a good economic and strategic resource seem good for the environment too. Companies and people with interests in coal like this term because it makes the basis of their livelihood (or obscene profit) look as natural as the green trees that are mowed down for mountaintop removal mining.

"Capture and Sequestration Technology" might be a term that you have heard recently. You likely have heard it in a commercial, since politicians tend to avoid big complex words. It's this capture and sequestration that would make coal... clean, so to speak. First of all, there is no example of successful capture and sequestration in full swing right now. So it doesn't exist. It would, if implemented, capture the CO2 emissions from a coal plant and store that gas as a solid underground. Sounds sweet! But the technology for capture and sequestration is not economically viable right now, and maybe even more important, the technology for capture and sequestration, well, like a lot of these things... well, turns out... it also doesn't exist.

Anyone see a pattern?

Ok so this is what we have been able to do. Coal isn't pure, it turns out, and burning it lets off these dangerous poisonous chemicals like sulfur which can form sulfuric acid and turn into acid rain and kill off more green trees and well- let's just say we have had limited success in removing sulfur from burned coal, along with NOx's and particulates. But its very expensive to do this. It would be prohibitively expensive to remove even a portion of the CO2 emissions from burned coal through the theoretical technology that represents capture and sequestration. And even if a significant portion of CO2 is successfully removed sometime in the far future, it will not really make coal "clean" by any stretch of the imagination. Resources dedicated to "clean coal technology" would probably do more to prevent global warming if these resources were used instead for funding other alternative energy projects. Coal is the dirtiest-burning widely used fossil fuel, period. I will go out on a 'limb' and say it is essentially impossible (with technology, infinite funds, magic, what have you), from a market standpoint, to make coal "clean" in the sense that wind or solar power is "clean".

So coal is not, nor will it ever be clean. Its about as clean as a cigarette and full of just about as many lies as smoking advertisements had 50 some years ago. The new "Marlboro Man" is this capture and sequestration technology: it's a fantasy.

There are good reasons to continue to use coal as an American energy resource. It's plentiful and abundant, it can be mined right here and instead of being bought abroad. It can be mined relatively cheaply, and it supports the employment of a lot of Americans. The infrastructure for its use in electricity production is already in place and transitioning to any other source for almost half of the American people would also be economically difficult. But one of these good reasons to use coal is NOT and simply cannot be environmental protection or even global warming prevention. Please, please don't accept these non-truths about coal. Be honest about coal, it has a dark side, literally, and we need to own the dirty reality of coal in order to continue to use it.