Before car pooling to St. Louis for the Peabody global warming event Saturday I had the pleasure of doing a fun phone interview on The Flyover Zone on WQNA. I was glad to have the chance to talk about the issue and I appreciated their encouragement.
I can't say the same for other news outlets. It was nice of the Belleville News Democrat to cover the rally Saturday given that most media outlets ignored it, but the resulting story and yesterday's "online update" read like something written by the Peabody public relations department.
First, the article cut the size of the crowd in half and then describes the power plant as something "that environmentalists argue will pollute the air and water in Southern Illinois."
"Environmentalists argue?" No, it will add pollution. Its not an argument or a debate. Its a fact no one can dispute that this power plant will be a source of new pollution. Why is this written as though there's some question about that reality?
The article ignored the messages of most of the speakers in order to give more time to a Peabody representative who claimed that "the plant is part of a new generation of power stations that are more environmentally friendly."
Its true that this plant is cleaner than the older plants Peabody coal is operating because federal regulations allow many older plants to be "grandfathered in" and continue operating without modern pollution control equipment. Peabody argues that this new plant is a better alternative to their older plants that pollute more, but are they going to shut any of those outdated plants down once their new one is operating? So far Peabody has refused to follow the example of Springfield's City Water Light & Power by shutting down an old coal plant and improving the pollution control equipment on others. Peabody would rather continue polluting at high levels with their aging plants because investing money in public health doesn't improve their profit margin.
While the global warming rally article included extensive arguments from Peabody, the News Democrat saw no reason to provide a balanced perspective yesterday in a non-story filled with wishful thinking by coal industry CEO Steven Leer. Calling this an article would be generous. Its more like free advertising filled with boastful claims by king coal.
In his desperate plea for the continued success of coal the industry, Leer claims that renewable energies like wind aren't the answer because it "cannot be developed fast enough to meet the world's growing thirst for energy."
Later in the article Leer argues that carbon sequestration technology to capture global warming emissions from coal plants is the real answer and that "utilities believe they can develop such technology on a commercial scale by 2020 or 2025."
Hmmm....Let me see if I understand this correctly. Wind and solar power generation, which are proven technologies widely in use today, can't be developed fast enough to meet demand. But, somehow demand for growth is slow enough that we can wait 15 years or more while the coal industry develops carbon capture technology.
So which is it? Is demand truly that pressing or do we have the luxury of doing nothing for the next 15 years or more while the coal industry researches new technology? How odd that the reporter didn't ask him about the logical inconsistency.
That's the coal industries' vision for the future. Taxpayers shell out billions of dollars in subsidies for research and development to benefit profitable companies instead of making a real investment in underutilized renewable energies. That makes perfect sense for the interests of the coal industry and their lobbyists. For the rest of us its an expensive recipe for disaster.