You can save money, or you can save the planet

You are very welcome Dave my granfather died in a west virginia coalmine making what america is today.  Also know coal dust can do to a man and kill him.  I have kin folk still in west virginia that work in the mines. Know what my father gave too me to learn how to survive and live off the land.  My father taught me the mountains,streams,rivers,valleys and the ocean.  Also know theres enough coal to outlast the ground and earth we stand on.  you make have book sense,you might even have the highest education but I learn today the space shuttle astronauts fixed a telescope in space and how sciencist must rewrite history books on space because of this telescope.  You know something dave my father even taught me about God. My father gave the greatest gifts of all how to survive.  God he put that coal there for a reason.  know that coal has kept familes warm and feed over 200 years or more now. Inmagine there will be better ideas for energy in my life time seen alot changes things we could ever dream of having being kids. But just think in these days of familes losing jobs,world markets falling apart.  But still theres that coal that have serve this country well and always there for us to survive on.

( Surrygirl ) We do have a very wonderful coal plant thats been here in richmond for 50 or more years. Dominion Virginia Dutch Gap coal plant located by Hericus park in chesterfield county. This area has the most beautiful wildlife and park which millions of familes go to each year..I have live near this plant all my life. The fish loves this place and very good fishing. When fish can live beside a coal plant and live,bald eagles and many endanger spieces of birds and every kind of animal. Even the blue crabs of the chespeake bay comes up to it shores and live. Just think to yourself now not environmentalist but power companies who saved this area and made this area for our children too see and have in the future that I got too see love and enjoyed. So I invite any family and environmentalist to come see hericus park and dutch gap that saved fish and wildlife that a coal plant saved from being run over by people and there subdivisions.

Just wanted to make a point regarding the reprocessing of nuclear fuel.  It is actually being done in a few places.. but using the currently available technology, it is not economically feasible.  The power companies have a lot of people to answer to.. their rate payers, their stockholders and neither of those groups wants higher costs.

I’m not sure how a discussion of a coal plant became a referendum on the Carter presidency, but we must be talking about a different Carter than the one I remember.  The one I remember was such a brilliant nuclear engineer that he couldn’t pronounce the word “nuclear,“ was most famous for turning out lights in the White House, wearing a sweater and did such a wonderful job in helping create modern Iran.  The Carter presidency is synonymous with miser index.  If you liked the Carter years, you have a great chance of reliving them.  I didn’t need a tax break to insulate two of the houses I’ve owned.  It made economic sense to do it.  I’ve also gone to high efficiency heating/cooling because it made economic sense to do that.  I certainly didn’t need big brother’s help to do what made sense.  Maybe I’m unusual.

Carter, by executive order, turned the Ford slowdown on reprocessing spent nuclear fuel into a ban so the Soviets wouldn’t think we were making nuclear weapons.  The result of this brilliance has been to increase the radioactive waste we need to deal with by 25-50%. 

We wail and bemoan our dependence on oil from people who don’t like us.  Decide it is all a plot from “Big Oil.“  We do this and refuse to develop our own resources.  No wonder such fine folks like the Saudi’s and Chavez laugh at us. By the way, the biggest recipient of the Big Oil profits was the US Government in the form of taxes. 

We need to develop and use our own resources: coal, nuclear, natural gas and oil.  The choices are become more self-sufficient, remain in thrall to folks who don’t like us or revert to a very primitive life-style.  We also need to handle pollutants like NOx and SO2 that really affect the environment with very stringent controls for new facilities.  We also need to redo the Clinton NSR rules that allow existing facilities to upgrade and become more efficient without economically ruinous “upgrades.“ 

Slam the “greenies?“  Why not?  They gave us the wonderful low water toilets that probably end up using more water and now the wonderful CFL’s that contain mercury and have resulted in high cost hazmat responses for broken bulbs.  They will fight every energy project that comes down the pike, be it coal, nuclear, solar or wind.  They really would like to move us back to the stone age.  By the way, the crowning green, sustainable demonstration project is an all-solar house in Troy, Michigan.  For $900k you get an 800 sqft house trailer that uses solar in an area that has very cold winters and gets 30% of the available sunlight during peak demand seaons.  It didn’t last a winter.  They are looking for $60k to repair the damage from frozen pipes.

“Jimmy Carter said we should vastly increase our use of coal. Ironic, isn’t it, that he is being used as the poster boy for the anti-coal greenies?”

Hello RSweeney:
I Don’t want to slam the “greenies.”  For the past 30 years politicos & the PR campaigns of commercial interests have been playing “let’s you & him fight” with the public. I think this sort of name calling distracts us from solving the issues of the day.

Carter’s biggest fear came true.  The big money went on the offensive and sold the country down the river:

“We can be sure that all the special interest groups in the country will attack the part of this plan that affects them directly. They will say that sacrifice is fine, as long as other people do it, but that their sacrifice is unreasonable, or unfair, or harmful to the country. If they succeed, then the burden on the ordinary citizen, who is not organized into an interest group, would be crushing. There should be only one test for this program: whether it will help our country.”
***

Carter’s plan was well balanced and buttressed by ongoing scientific research.
The big money got their way. And, gone were research grants for new energy sources, and tax breaks for work-a-day Americans investing in efficiencies for their homes (I got a $900 tax break for insulating my attic) and businesses; leaving, by default, a policy of tax-funded programs subsidizing production and consumption of oil.

We have lost 30 years of scientific, technical & economic progress spinning our wheels and paying taxes on behalf of Big Oil.

For the benefit of Big Oil, we Americans support brutal Petro-Tyrannies; spend lives and limbs of our young troops and that of uncounted civilian innocents in foreign lands. We stifle science, ignore reason, dumb ourselves down, affirm irresponsibility (corporate & personal) as expressions of Liberty, and squander our children’s birthright.