Michael Bloomberg points to the lie of “clean coal”

According to this article in The Nation, Michael Bloomberg has donated $50 million to the Sierra Club for the purpose of taking coal plants offline and replacing them with renewable fuel sources and conservation:

Bloomberg stood in 100-degree heat on Thursday morning outside the GenOn power plant in Alexandria, Virginia. Joined by Sierra Club executive director Michael Brune, Bloomberg said he hoped his philanthropic contribution would improve public health both at the local level—by reducing emissions of the mercury, dioxin and other pollutants that are released when coal is burned—and at the global level, by limiting the severity of climate change. “If we are going to get serious about reducing our carbon footprint in the United States, we have to get serious about coal,” said Bloomberg, according to his prepared remarks. “Coal is a self-inflicted public health risk, polluting the air we breathe, adding mercury to our water, and [is] the leading cause of climate disruption.”

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Unhealthy remembering of 9/11.

I'm all for remembering, but only as long as remembering is emotionally healthy and oriented to an optimistic future. About 15 years ago, I met a young man in a civil war museum in Virginia. Unprovoked, he stated that he was angry at "the North" because the North had defeated the South--and his great great great [great?] grandfather had  "fought bravely for the South. He was visibly angry as he told me these things. It was pathetic to see someone so consumed and defined the American Civil War. His way of remembering had trapped him in an endless cycle of anger. In an article in Harper's Magazine (August 2011) titled "After 9/11: The Limits of Remembrance," David Rieff has expressed concern that many Americans are "remembering" 9/11 in accordance with the official George W. Bush explanation from 2001: We were attacked "because the terrorists hate our freedoms--our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other." This form of "remembrance" has no room for any possibility that the attack was provoked, even in part, in response to the constant meddling in the Middle East by the United States, going back at least as far as 1953's "

Continue ReadingUnhealthy remembering of 9/11.