According to a new report out today by the Worldwatch Institute, a transition to renewable energy sources promises significant global job gains at a time when the coal industry has been hemorrhaging jobs for years.
In the United States alone, coal industry employment has fallen by half in the last 20 years, despite a one-third increase in production.
"President Bush has signed a $162 billion war supplemental that will fund the wars in Iraq and Ahghanistan into 2009."
A report put out in October of 2005 by the Renewable Energy Policy Project, the Apollo Alliance and Policy Matters Ohio puts the $162 billion mentioned in the above headline into some perspective.
So, I am new to blogging on Coal Is Dirty, but if you follow the other sites where I post -- Its Getting Hot In Here and RAN's Understory -- you'll see that I post ALOT about radical environmentalists fighting King Coal using non-violent direct action.
A few years ago, I took some time to travel through Australia. While there I made friends with a number of Aussie climate activists and did a bit of organizing with them. They are beautiful people doing brilliant work.
Australian coal amounts to about 30% of the emissions coming from coal worldwide. They are selling it like crazy to East Asia. Australia is also deeply impacted by climate change (drought, rising sea levels etc).
Coal investors are taking some hits around the world.
Coal prices in the U.S., Europe and Australia fell 10% causing many investors to chose flight over fight. Falling coal prices wiped out about $25 billion from Australian resources stocks. The Dow Jones U.S. Coal Index tumbled 14%.
Scientific America has an in-depth article out today on the Georgia court decision to halt the construction of a new coal-fired power plant.
In the ruling to disallow the construction of the 1,200 megawatt coal-fired power plant, Fulton County Court Judge Thelma Wyatt Cummings stated that:
"The plant as permitted [by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources] would annually emit large amounts of air pollutants, including eight [million] to nine million tons of carbon dioxide."
And that:
Check out this smokin' hot youtube video posted yesterday in which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) states that "coal makes us sick."
Here's a quick transcript of the Reid video:
Reid: "We talk about cost competitiveness, but one this we fail to talk about is the costs that you don't see on the bottom line. That is, coal makes us sick. Oil makes us sick. And this global warming is ruining our country, it's ruining our world.
Energy bosses at this week's World Petroleum Congress (WPC) are keen to promote carbon capture and storage (CCS) as the solution to global warming and greenhouse gas emissions.
But experts are warning not to run to the bank just yet as a dicovery Channel news article asks: Is Carbon Capture a Pipe Dream?
