Coal Has a Place…in History

A great editorial in the Raleigh News-Observer no less!

An excerpt…

Coal combustion in the United States is also a huge contributor to global warming that releases over 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) a year into the atmosphere. China’s coal use releases 4 billion tons. It does not take a meteorologist to figure out that increasing CO2 in the air by burning coal at these rates will lead to larger problems. Nor does it take an economist to guess that China, one of our largest trading partners, isn’t going to be encouraged to stem its appetite for fossil fuels if we won’t do the same.

Yet we continue to hear tired tirades about how switching to clean energy will bankrupt the economy and cost us hundreds of thousands of jobs. These same worn-out arguments were used 40 years ago when air pollution controls were first proposed for coal-fired plants, and 20 years ago when we banned the use of CFCs. We have survived without the projected economic collapses and have created new technologies to meet new challenges.

Coal has a place in U.S. history, a place that has allowed our economy to grow and flourish. But just as we have moved from horses to cars, just as we have advanced from typewriters to computers, it is now time to move from fossil fuels to new, proven ways of producing and saving energy. This movement has already begun in other countries. The United Kingdom and Germany have cut their coal use by 50 percent, Iceland supplies most of its needs through geothermal plants and Denmark is building wind turbines as fast as it can.

About JW Randolph

Raised on the banks of the Tennessee River, JW's work to create progress in his home state and throughout Appalachia has been featured on the Rachel Maddow Show, The Daily Kos and Grist. He served first as Appalachian Voices’ Legislative Associate and then Tennessee director until leaving to pursue a career in medicine in 2012.