Coal Front Group Sets Up Dirty ‘Blogger Brigade’ To Fight Reality
Coal Front Group Sets Up Dirty ‘Blogger Brigade’ To Fight Reality
The coal industry is attempting to organize bloggers to promote their false “clean coal” propaganda. The Reality Coalition, a group of national environmental organizations, have begun airing the message that “There’s no such thing as clean coal,” to counter the hundreds of millions of dollars spent by coal-powered corporations to pretend that coal is a “clean” fuel. So the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) and Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), essentially one coal propaganda group with two different faces, is fighting back with an email blast asking people to join their “Blogger Brigade”:
You can get into the debate. If you are interested in becoming an active member of ABEC’s Blogger Brigade just send me an e-mail to abroadhurst@balancedenergy.org and let me know you’re interested. One of our team members will give you a call and walk you through the process. It’s really easy – and for those of you who don’t already Blog, it is fun! You can join the online debate that’s already going on and you and others can remain anonymous (if you want to) at the same time! We’ll even set up a little competition to see how many Blog entries each person can make.
Notwithstanding the strange capitalization of “Blog,” this is the latest in a series of netcentric efforts from the coal public relations people. They’ve launched a Facebook page, Twitter feed, and have littered blogs with comments defending coal.
No matter how large ABEC’s “Blogger Brigade” gets, they still won’t be able to hide the toxic and dirty reality of coal. Yesterday morning, a dike at the Kingston coal-fired power plant in Harriman, Tennessee broke, letting loose a deluge of about 500 million gallons of coal slurry into tributaries of the Tennessee River, destroying twelve homes and derailing a train.
Watch the startling news footage:
Now that’s something worth blogging about.
Full email:
You may have heard some people say that “clean coal” isn’t real. Not true. Did you know that over the last 30 years, the coal-based electricity sector has invested more than $50 Billion in technologies to reduce traditional emissions regulated by federal and state clean air act laws? That is one reason that our air is cleaner than ever.
How do we make it cleaner and deal with carbon emissions? Well, there are more than 80 carbon capture and storage demonstration and research projects, predominantly underway in the U.S. The coal-based electricity sector is moving aggressively toward bringing advanced clean coal technologies to the marketplace domestically and abroad. That’s a real solution folks, not just a dream. Experts agree: because coal is affordable and abundant right here in the U.S. coal is going to continue to be part of our energy mix for years to come.
Absolutely we need to continue to develop renewable sources of energy, and coal is one of a mix of fuels used to produce electricity (although half of our electricity right now across the country is generated with American coal). Coal is here to stay so we have to find a way to continue to make it cleaner.
Learn more about these projects and about carbon capture and storage.
Want to do more? Tell people about our solutions for continuing advancements in cleaning up coal to improve our environment. Cleaner air is our goal yet there are people who don’t believe that clean coal technology exists. They don’t believe Americans have the will or the way to continue to make advances. They just say “no” but don’t provide any viable alternatives.
You can get into the debate. If you are interested in becoming an active member of ABEC’s Blogger Brigade just send me an e-mail to abroadhurst@balancedenergy.org and let me know you’re interested. One of our team members will give you a call and walk you through the process. It’s really easy – and for those of you who don’t already Blog, it is fun! You can join the online debate that’s already going on and you and others can remain anonymous (if you want to) at the same time! We’ll even set up a little competition to see how many Blog entries each person can make.
Happy holidays to you and yours and best wishes for a safe and prosperous 2009.
Sincerely,
Amy Broadhurst
Americans for Balanced Energy Choices
The coal industry’s poor design and maintenance of its sludge ponds has a long and sordid history: In 1972, a giant impoundment collapsed in Logan County, West Virginia, causing a landslide that killed 125 people, injured 1,000 others, and left 4,000 people homeless.
In 2000, a sludge impoundment failed in Inez, Kentucky, spilling more than 300 million gallons of coal-contaminated waste into local waterways. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, this was among the largest environmental disasters ever to occur East of the Mississippi.
There are literally hundreds of these sludge impoundments across the United States. As coal has dominated Appalachia, it has left behind a toxic legacy for residents, a legacy that will haunt the region for decades. For example, in Sundial, West Virginia, an elementary school sits just 400 yards downhill from a massive impoundment containing 2.8 billion gallons of toxic coal sludge.
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Hi there
I just checked the ACCCE and AmericasPower sites and saw no reference to the “blogger brigade” you mentioned. From where did you get that information?
Also, lots of people are twitters updates about the Harriman, TN coal ash spill. On Twitter, search for #coalash and #tvaspill
- Amy Gahran
December 23rd, 2008 at 10:24 pmThe power outage in Hawaii gives me an excellent opportunity to explain why coal miners should start mining both iron and lithium. Remember during the campaign how McCain was saying he wanted to give a quarter billion dollars in a battery competition? It turns out Arizona is way ahead in lithium-sulfur technology. Sodium-sulfur cells of have been used for large industrial storage, but they aren’t as environmentally friendly. We need to dig holes in the ground to store our nuclear waste dry casks for 300 years or so anyway. 10 terawatts of wind, 10 terawatts of solar, some nice battery tech, and we won’t even need to worry about reprocessing the fuel. In 300 years, Harry Reid probably will have retired anyway.
The only thing the nuclear lobby has left is that the wind doesn’t blow all the time and the sun doesn’t shine all the time. Why not help the states buy some uninterrupted supply?
December 27th, 2008 at 4:13 pmagahran:
Here’s the ABEC link
December 29th, 2008 at 11:04 amRevoke the hat before more salmon get mercury-sludged!
December 29th, 2008 at 6:42 pmAs a lifelong resident of West Virginia I know how our state has been held in a state of virtual feudalism by the coal industry for over a century. The “Friends of Coal” have used their vast resources to perpetuate this. They have run their candidates for Senate and have used their power to buy governors and members of the legislature. They have worked hard to destroy our environment through mountaintop removal mining. They have managed to violate every environmental law with their mine runoff and dumping with the complicity of the Bush administration that has rendered many such laws to nothing more than a joke. Sadly too much of the public here is either involved in these nefarious doings or just doen’t care.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:48 pmThanks for information about the coal sludge contamination. More evidence that the only thing that matters to the coal industry is money, not lives or health. Look at the statistics regarding health care in West Virginia.some surveys rank us as one of the unhealthiest places to live. Look at the death rates from cancer, etc. and compare. Getting compensation for work-related injuries has gotten less realistic thanks to the nature of the legislature and the courts. The basic assumption seems to be that any thing submitted to the court is a “frivolous lawsuit”. Couple this with the attempts to make “right to work” laws the rule and destroy what remains of the unions and the work force will be relegated to no more than slave labor. Let’s change the name to “work till you drop”.
January 6th, 2009 at 1:58 pm