“Mounting Costs Slow the Push for Clean Coal” (“The Energy Challenge” series, front page, May 30) describes the challenges facing the push for “carbon capture and sequestration,” the idea of burying global warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.
In Appalachia, many of us dismiss so-called clean coal as the latest in a century of broken promises by the coal industry. Where the industry promised economic prosperity, we have some of the poorest counties in America. Where it promised responsible mining, we have a landscape and culture decimated by mountaintop removal. This industry has shown a blatant disregard for environmental and safety laws.
Holding out the possibility of a distant new technology has served this industry well. Meanwhile, over the past year, coal has doubled in price as American companies have shipped more and more overseas.
Meanwhile, wind can’t be exported, and the price of the sun never goes up.
Mary Anne Hitt
Boone, N.C., May 30, 2008
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