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EPA proposes allowing coal plants to be built near national parks
Critics fear the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will adopt a rule in the waning days of the Bush administration that will make it easier to build coal-fired power plants near national parks.
The proposed change, pending since last June, comes as the utility industry moves into its biggest building boom in coal-fueled power plants in decades. To meet growing electricity needs, more than 20 plants are under construction in 14 states and more than 100 are in various stages of planning.
Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, the third-ranking Republican in the Senate, vowed in an interview with The Associated Press to push Congress to overrule the EPA if it enacts the rule, perhaps as early as this summer.
The new rule would change the way states, the EPA and others calculate the impact of a new pollution source, like a coal plant, on a park's maximum pollution load, said John Bunyak of the National Park Service's Air Resources Division in Denver. Instead of weighing peak periods of pollution, the new rule would use annual averages.
Don Barger, southern regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, compared it to a person sticking one hand in a block of ice and the other in a fire.
"Your average temperature is just fine, but your hands are not," he said. "You are getting some real impact there."
As an example, he said air quality in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the country's most-visited national park with more than 9 million visitors a year, recently reached an "orange alert" pollution warning. The park straddles the Tennessee-North Carolina border.
When that happens, "the park is getting hammered. People in the park are getting hammered. Plants in the park are getting hammered," Barger said. "It doesn't matter where it averages out some other time. You have a family from Ohio on vacation. It is the only time they are going to be there. What views can they see? What air are they breathing?"
EPA spokeswoman Cathy Milbourn said the rule is part of an EPA program to prevent air quality degradation in national parks and would not change the level of emissions allowed in clean-air areas.
But in a letter to EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson, Alexander writes that the National Park Service and the EPA's own regional air quality experts have determined the proposal would result in undercounting of actual pollution sources.
Alexander wrote that the National Park Service says the rule "provides the lowest possible degree of protection" for 156 so-called Class 1 areas that include the country's most revered national parks and preserves, from Acadia in Maine to Yellowstone in Wyoming. Critics fear the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency will adopt a rule in the waning days of the Bush administration that will make i... more -
Celebrate clean coal, come on!
In one TV commercial, Kool and the Gang warble their celebration of good times because coal, yes, coal, makes the party possible in America. In another, white and black, young and old, male and female, and even someone in a doctor's green scrubs, stare into the camera and soulfully declare: "I believe" American know-how will make coal clean and stop it from contributing to climate change. Not sold? Maybe you missed the newspaper ads and billboards warning that turning away from coal could mean blackouts, unemployment and higher electric bills.
These messages and other variations on the coal-is-great theme are flooding the nation courtesy of the coal industry, coal-fueled utilities, railroads and related industries. The pro-coal marketing campaign -- known by its tag line "Clean Coal" -- has kicked into high gear as prospects for new plants have turned bleak. Wall Street is tightening financing, leading to what one analyst told the Christian Science Monitor is a "de facto moratorium on coal power." The expected election of a more environmentally friendly president may lead to the first federal limits on carbon dioxide emissions. Even red states like Kansas are now battling the construction of coal-fired plants. Last year, 59 new plants were either canceled or halted across the nation.
When it comes to the threat of global warming, "the coal industry are the last people to get it," says Daniel J. Weiss, senior fellow and director of climate strategy at the Center for American Progress, a nonprofit, progressive think tank. "That's why they're fighting so hard. They're on a death spiral right now."
The coal industry's woes have risen as worries over climate change have increased. Today's coal-fired plants emit copious amounts of carbon dioxide, a major greenhouse gas. One new plant planned for Iowa, for example, would dump 5.9 million tons of the stuff into the air in just one year. Two proposed Kansas plants would add 11 million tons annually.
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As the coal debate continues, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced April 23 that global levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide increased by 19 billion tons in the last year. The worldwide concentration is now 385 parts per million. The level that is expected to tip the world into disaster is 450 parts per million.
But climate change isn't raining on the coal industry's campaign. In April, Barack Obama acknowledged a voter sporting one of the industry's hats at a campaign stop in Dunmore, Penn., and then used the industry's own terminology to talk about his support for investing in carbon storage research. In an appearance in Charleston, W.Va., Hillary Clinton also used the industry's own words to pledge her support for doing the same.
Obama, Clinton and John McCain all favor legislation to fight climate change. The nearly identical programs proposed by the two Democrats are more far-reaching than that put forth by McCain. However, none of them support a moratorium on building new coal-fired plants.
Meanwhile, the Clean Coal marketing machine keeps rolling. As one commercial declares, coal powers "our way of life." On the soundtrack, Kool and the Gang sing, "Celebrate good times, come on!"
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What an insidious campaign. And all the presidential candidates go along with it! It is time to tell them to stop this pandering to those industries who care about nothing but their own balance sheets. CO2 levels are now the highest they have been in 650,000 years and it is because of the very garbage being spewed by coal plants.
"Clean coal" is an assault on reason! Shame on Obama, Clinton, and McCain for giving it credence to get votes while people die from its effects. In one TV commercial, Kool and the Gang warble their celebration of good times because coal, yes, coal, makes the party possible in Am... more
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