Why is Big Coal trying so hard to convince us that coal is cheapest and the cleanest? Why are they fighting against using natural gas as an alternative? How can they afford to buy these expensive, full-page ads in the newspaper?
I guess the coal industry doesn’t want us to move beyond coal.
They are touting that coal is low-cost, reliable, and increasingly clean. Reliable – yes; but low-cost and increasingly clean?
Leslie Glustrom, of Clean Energy Action (a group that is exposing the true costs of coal –
www.cleanenergyaction.org), recently noted that: “The coal industry fails to mention that the price that Xcel paid for coal in 2009 ($1.52/MMBTU) is the price that in 2008 they had expected to pay in 2035. That means coal cost estimates were only off by about a quarter century.”
Clean coal is an oxymoron! Heavy metals (especially mercury – a deadly poison), particulates (asthma and lung disease), and toxic fly ash (poisoning our water supplies and feedlots) are forced into the environment every day. Did you know that coal plants also use millions of gallons of our precious water?
Burning coal to generate electricity isn’t going to go away anytime soon, but now that Colorado has a 30 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard, the coal industry’s dominance is already beginning to fade.
Don’t listen to their propaganda. The health of the planet and of future generations is at stake. Renewable energy is the answer and the faster we bring it on board, the healthier we’ll all be.
Teresa Foster, Longmont
This is an online-only letter.
