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Energy

If you Love the Earth on Earth Day, Close a Coal Plant

Juan Cole 04/22/2013

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Dirty coal is killing us and killing the earth. Here is a short documentary.

Coal plants produce a lion’s share of carbon dioxide poisoning of the atmosphere, causing rapid global warming. In the case of the US, they are responsible for fully 40% of our CO2 emissions.

The single most important thing you can do for the earth is call your utility company and pressure them not to use coal, and lobby your city to develop its own solar installations, and put solar panels on your roof.

Close all the 600 coal plants in the United States and you’d dramatically reduce our 500 billion metric tons a year of CO2 emissions. (The supposed good news that our emissions have fallen from 6 to 5 billion metric tons annually is laughable, since 3, 4, or 5 billion tons a year will still radically alter the earth. We need to get it down to sustainable levels and hydrocarbons like natural gas cannot do that!)

Environmentalists should think strategically. As bad as a tar sands pipeline might be, coal plants are far, far worse. We should put all our eggs in one basket and target coal for extinction within a decade.

The solar industry already employs more workers than are in the coal mines.

Filed Under: Energy, Environment

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

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