Clean Coal is a Lie. Environmentalists Fight Back With Cartoon

4 years ago Environment

gas maskPhoto:

Image by Rastafabi

Ah, coal. If you live in the United States you've been subjected to an advertising blitz in preparation for the upcoming elections assuring you that clean coal is the answer to all of our problems. The four dollar gasoline will go away (or if you sell oil you can switch to selling liquid coal!), we'll be able to pull out of Iraq (or commit more resources and win!), and it's all perfectly clean. Not a single, solitary dirty thing about it.

Wait, you may ask--how does coal get clean? Doesn't it pump billions of tons of carbon into the atmosphere every year? Why yes, yes it does. And the coal companies are planning to get rid of it all somehow. They'll let you know. Seriously, carbon sequestration for coal won't be ready until 2030, if there is such a thing. As you might imagine, this has raised the ire of the environmental community quite a bit, and led us to produce stuff like this:

That cartoon is really just the tip of the iceberg--an entire website, Coal-is-Dirty.com, has sprung up to combat the idea that clean coal is like anything other than "fat-free donuts." They've got talent to burn--the cartoon was developed in conjunction with Mark Fiore, an award-winning political cartoonist, and we all know the coal industry isn't going to stop giving them low-hanging fruit for subject matter. Environmental Graffiti is up for four bloggers’ choice awards. You can vote for us for best entertainment blog, best blog of all time, best geek blog and best animal blogger.

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Comments

Old Comments

Rick S. says

Sep 6th, 2009 at 12am
"Clean Coal" is supposed to capture the carbon and pump it into high pressure repositories underground. However the coal industry has never tested their Florida facility because they demand immunity from liability law suits before doing the test. They fear that the CO2 will leak up and fill low laying area (such a basements) smothering people and they don't want to be sued. Furthermore a bit more than half the energy that the coal generates must be spent to trap, and compress the carbon dioxide (CO2) and pump it underground. This will double the cost of coal power and will make nuclear, solar and wind much more attractive. It would be the end of the industry so of course they talk big about "clean coal" and will do nothing as long as they can. "Clean Coal" is an oxymoron. Warm regards, Rick.

Mr. Sustainable says

May 29th, 2008 at 12am
Wow! Easily the best video on the subject I've seen since the Stinky Toons results! http://www.stinkytoons.com/sgw Thanks for sharing!