I CAN’T BELIEVE I ATE THE COAL THING. Brian Beutler reports back on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Climate Change hearing on the future of coal this morning: “[E]verybody from the governor of Wyoming to the wonks at the Center for American Progress think a cap-and-trade program is inevitable, they also think that many, many billions of dollars in subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration technology will be crucial to any greenhouse-gas reduction strategy.”
Seems even the most climate savvy of our reps, committee chair Ed Markey, drank the Kool Aid on carbon capture and storage: “Fortunately, carbon capture and storage — or ‘CCS’ — offers a path forward for coal … All indications are that CCS is a viable interim solution to the coal problem.”
I’m going to go ahead and bring Dave Roberts‘s meme over here, so say it with me now: Coal is the enemy of the human race — not a solution to climate change, not a fix for energy independence, and not the logical first step to abandoning petroleum. The prospect of heavily-subsidized CCS as a tenant in any climate change legislation Congress may or may not pass makes me queasy at best.
–Kate Sheppard
