How much filthy coal did you burn today?

Most people don't think much about how their electricity is produced. It turns out that half of the electricity in the United States is produced by burning coal. Maybe you're thinking "So what?" Here's why you should care. There is no such thing as "clean coal," it is still a fantasy, not a reality. Mining coal releases dangerous amounts of mercury into the human environment, including 48 tons of mercury, "the largest source of man-made mercury pollution in the U.S." Burning coal releases massive amounts of carbon dioxide. Coal is dangerous. And see here. In the United States, we burn a railroad car worth of coal every 3 seconds. This year, your family will burn 1,000 pounds of coal just to run your clothes dryer (yet many communities make it illegal to dry your clothes on a line outside). Each year, a 500 megawatt coal plant burns 1.4 million tons of coal. It also produces:

  • 125,000 tons of ash and 193,000 tons of sludge from the smokestack scrubber. A scrubber uses powdered limestone and water to remove pollution from the plant's exhaust. Instead of going into the air, the pollution goes into a landfill or into products like concrete and drywall. This ash and sludge consists of coal ash, limestone, and many pollutants, such as toxic metals like lead and mercury.
  • 225 pounds of arsenic, 114 pounds of lead, 4 pounds of cadmium, and many other toxic heavy metals. Mercury emissions from coal plants are suspected of contaminating lakes and rivers in northern and northeast states and Canada. In Wisconsin alone, more than 200 lakes and rivers are contaminated with mercury. Health officials warn against eating fish caught in these waters, since mercury can cause birth defects, brain damage and other ailments. Acid rain also causes mercury poisoning by leaching mercury from rocks and making it available in a form that can be taken up by organisms.
  • Tons of hazardous and acidic waste which can contaminate ground water. Strip mining also destroys habitat and can affect water tables.
Again, how much coal did you burn today? If you live in an area where most of the electricity comes from coal, the amount of coal you burn will astound you. Your family burned 30 pounds of coal today. And you'll burn another 30 pounds tomorrow. And the next day.
The average household in the U.S buys, on average, 900 kWh of electricity per month, roughly every 30 days. If we multiply 30 days times 24 hours, we find that there are 720 hours in a month. The average household, therefore, is responsible for consuming 1.25 pounds of coal per hour (900 kWh = 900 pounds divided by 720 hours). (Note: your mileage may vary, as we are assuming an ‘average’ house here. Check your utility bill for the past 12 months for your actual kilowatt-hour usage.) There are 8,760 hours in a year, so if we multiply 1.25 pounds by 8,760, we find that the ‘average’ house using 100% coal-generated electricity is responsible for the burning of 10,950 pounds of coal for the electricity they consume per year. That’s nearly 5.5 tons!
The question, then, is why we don't work harder to be more energy efficient? We could construct buildings that are close to carbon neutral (and see here). We could massively reduce our energy use without reducing our quality of life. Each of us could help in dozens of easy ways. Consider, too, that peak coal is approaching; don't believe the hype that there are many decades of cheap coal left. With all of these problems with coal, why does the U.S. Department of Energy website tout the virtues of coal without disclosing the dangers? Why doesn't the DOE discuss energy conservation as a means of drastically reducing the amount of coal we burn? The logic is indisputable: Those areas of the country that depend heavily on coal could cut the trainloads of coal they burn in half if they cut their use of electricity in half. There are easy ways to cut the our use of energy (and see here). We could live smart, if only we had the will, if only we would take the time to consider that there are far better options. If only we thought about it, we would realize that our energy-wasteful habits are killing American industry. Unfortunately, we live in a country that doesn't know how to stop bad things from happening and to make good things happen. We are squandering our future. It's pathetic for a country that talks such a big game to fail so miserably. Isn't it time to start writing a happier ending to this sad story? Here's how. Talk to your friends and neighbors about the dangers of coal. Take the time to learn more about coal. Read this Sierra Club publication: The Dirty Truth About Coal. And when you're trying to decide who to believe, remember that the Sierra Club isn't trying to make a profit, unlike those who want to burn ever-larger amounts of coal.

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JK Rowling discusses the “fringe benefits of failure”

In June 2008, J.K. Rowling gave this delightful and insightful commencement speech recognizing the upside of failure. J.K. Rowling Speaks at Harvard Commencement from Harvard Magazine on Vimeo. How is failure essential? Rowling told the audience that it "strips away the unessential" and sets us free to see what really matters. Rock bottom can become "a solid foundation." In fact, she urged that it is "impossible to live without failing at something." Rowling's 20-minute talk is filled with nuggets of wisdom, and illustrated with stories about people with the courage to freely think and act, as well as those who dared to value empathy more than "rubies."

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If Michael Moore ran for President

At Truthout, Robert Naiman asks and answers what would happen if Michael Moore ran for President in 2012:

If Michael Moore were to run for president in 2012, it could be a game changer in American political life. For starters, it would likely shorten the war in Afghanistan by at least six months, and the American and Afghan lives that would be saved would alone justify the effort. If Moore announced his candidacy for the Democratic nomination now, and followed up that announcement with a vigorous campaign focused on the struggles of rank-and-file Democrats, it would remobilize rank-and-file Democratic activists. It's possible that he might even win; but win or lose, the campaign could arrest and reverse the current rightward, pro-corporate trajectory of our national politics, which is the predictable consequence of the failure of Team Obama to deliver on its promises from 2008, which in turn was the predictable consequence of the doomed effort to try to serve two masters: Wall Street and Main Street.

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Why financial reform will never happen

President Obama, 1/29/09:

...when I saw an article today indicating that Wall Street bankers had given themselves $20 billion worth of bonuses -- the same amount of bonuses as they gave themselves in 2004 -- at a time when most of these institutions were teetering on collapse and they are asking for taxpayers to help sustain them, and when taxpayers find themselves in the difficult position that if they don't provide help that the entire system could come down on top of our heads -- that is the height of irresponsibility. It is shameful.
President Obama, 1/14/10:
As we all know, our country has endured the deepest recession we've faced in generations. And much of the turmoil was caused by irresponsibility on the part of banks and financial institutions. Firms took reckless risks in pursuit of short-term profits and soaring bonuses, triggering a financial crisis that nearly pulled the economy into a second Great Depression. ... My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed. And my determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people -- folks who have not been made whole, and who continue to face real hardship in this recession. We want our money back, and we're going to get it. And that's why I'm proposing a Financial Crisis Responsibility Fee to be imposed on major financial firms until the American people are fully compensated for the extraordinary assistance they provided to Wall Street. If these companies are in good enough shape to afford massive bonuses, they are surely in good enough shape to afford paying back every penny to taxpayers.
New York Times, 2/7/10:
Just two years after Mr. Obama helped his party pull in record Wall Street contributions — $89 million from the securities and investment business, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics — some of his biggest supporters, like Mr. Dimon, have become the industry’s chief lobbyists against his regulatory agenda. Republicans are rushing to capitalize on what they call Wall Street’s “buyer’s remorse” with the Democrats. And industry executives and lobbyists are warning Democrats that if Mr. Obama keeps attacking Wall Street “fat cats,” they may fight back by withholding their cash. ... Though Wall Street has long been a major source of Democratic campaign money (alongside Hollywood and Silicon Valley), Mr. Obama built unusually direct ties to his contributors there. ... Wall Street lobbyists say the financial industry’s big Democratic donors help ensure that their arguments reach the ears of the president and Congress. White House visitors’ logs show dozens of meetings with big Wall Street fund-raisers, including Gary D. Cohn, a president of Goldman Sachs; Mr. Dimon of JPMorgan Chase; and Robert Wolf, the chief of the American division of the Swiss bank UBS, who has also played golf, had lunch and watched July 4 fireworks with the president.
Bloomberg News, 2/10/10:
President Barack Obama said he doesn’t “begrudge” the $17 million bonus awarded to JPMorgan Chase & Co. Chief Executive Officer Jamie Dimon or the $9 million issued to Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO Lloyd Blankfein, noting that some athletes take home more pay. The president, speaking in an interview, said in response to a question that while $17 million is “an extraordinary amount of money” for Main Street, “there are some baseball players who are making more than that and don’t get to the World Series either, so I’m shocked by that as well.” “I know both those guys; they are very savvy businessmen,” Obama said in the interview yesterday in the Oval Office with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which will appear on newsstands Friday. “I, like most of the American people, don’t begrudge people success or wealth. That is part of the free- market system.” Obama sought to combat perceptions that his administration is anti-business and trumpeted the influence corporate leaders have had on his economic policies. He plans to reiterate that message when he speaks to the Business Roundtable, which represents the heads of many of the biggest U.S. companies, on Feb. 24 in Washington.
Any questions? And are trillion-dollar bailouts for these firms also a part of our "free-market system"?

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