Tag Archives: energy policies

Clean Coal is a fossil fuels Free Lunch

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Clean Coal is a free lunchThere’s no such thing as Clean Coal. The concept is an ingenious public relations gambit like Clean-Skies, an No-Child-Left-Behind. Colorado’s supposedly progressive Governor Bill Ritter is an dirty backer. The attempted makeover of the dark fossil fuel has prompted an equal and opposite public reaction.

Laudably, the industry is trying to raise public awareness to “what lies behind the plug.” They ask energy consumers to face the reality that lights –their television even– have to be powered somehow. The image they use is a piece of coal being tapped by an extension cord. It certainly looks magically detached from any complication. Leaving alone that you have to burn the coal (imagine depicting steaks cooking on a stone cold barbecue grill), I’d defy anyone to handle the piece of coal without getting the orange plug completely smudged.

Of course, clean or not, coal is a fossil fuel, the consumption of which is one of the primary causes of Global Warming, aka Climate Change. “Clean Coal” is just a way for the oldest energy industry to get in on the alternative energy gravy train.

Clean coal is odorless shitThe Coen Brothers have directed a hilarious television ad which parodies the Coal Companies pitching their product as an air freshener, even as the aerosol spews pure smoke.

It’s absolutely dispiriting to see Barack Obama championing “Clean Coal” in a TV spot. Who would not like to think that American ingenuity can figure out a way to burn coal cleanly? If we can reverse osmosis, halt aging and make 0% fat fat, why disbelieve we can’t strip carbon of its essence?

At the America’s Power website, the coal industry promises to use Clean Coal to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and of course, to provide jobs. A US map reveals several Clean Coal research sites in Colorado. They are Boulder, Denver, Englewood, Littleton, Wheat Ridge, Nucla and La Vita.

colorado clean coal

Even if the lipstick on pig research is just a boondoggle to snag Federal funded jobs, aren’t there real alternative energy sources to pursue?

Cutting edge technology of wind power

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You gotta love how wind power is the poster child for alternative energy. wind-power-turbines News segments about energy self-reliance begin with a depiction of wind turbines. Election ads about the imperative to invest in other energies, more wind turbines. Is energy from the wind a new technology? I’m not sure it isn’t actually the oldest, next to kindling wood. Wind might tie with the water wheel, another energy they’re lauding as alternative.

We’ve had windmills since man needed energy to push water against the tendencies of gravity. Man reversed the scheme when he needed to moving water to put muscle into his mechanical devices. Both came many millennium before steam and oil.

So what is the technology we need to invest in wind power, beside optimization of process, storage and transmission? Hahaha. The hurdle to overcome with wind power is the will to surround ourselves with windmills. Even if it means the quaint windmills of the Dutch lowlands, I’m not sure the public is prepared to despoil its open space, its peripheral view-shed, with lumbering omniscient propeller blades, squeaking when they need oiling.

What kind of landscape maintains its serenity with the constant grinding of wingless, flightless single-prop stick-planes going forever nowhere?

The call for alternative sources of energy is less about inaccessible technology. It’s about making compromises which we’ve already declined. Off-shore platform oil spills, no thank you. Nuclear reactors courting unthinkable cataclysm? No. Ungainly wind machines generating unceasing turbulence? Nimby. Coal. Choke. Clean Coal. Gag me with oxymoronic insolence.

The least palatable of all the unfortunate last resorts is the energy alternative never mentioned because it means less investment and fewer jobs. It’s the only remedy that doesn’t resemble a hammer to our environmental coffin nail, and it counters our consumer culture. Energy conservation. It may cast a cold shadow like a windmill, but isn’t it the only sustainable solution of the bunch?

If you don’t want a nuclear meltdown, nor large bird-slashing knives spinning your thinking space, nor toxin spewing coal, nor combustibles cooking the earth, why not invest your efforts in being personally energy independent. The logo for alternative energy should be a smart smiling face.

American government and business refuse to take any measures to conserve energy

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All American businesses are trying to pose themselves as being respecters of the environment, energy efficient, and Green, and so is the Federal Government and Pentagon, too. However, even a cursory examination of policies by these organizations show that American government and businesses, at all levels, simply refuse to take any major measures to reduce energy consumption by our country.

Big Business controls government in our country, which can scarcely be considered a democracy due to this business control. We are a corporate plutocracy instead. So, at this time, it is really in corporate hands to control major government policy regarding energy use. What are the needed measures in this country to reduce energy use? These measures are never mentioned or talked about, simply because Big Business and corporate Big government do not want to implement them.

To reduce energy use in the future, government would have to take major steps to change previous and current urban planning and transportation policies. A federal zoning policy would have to be instituted that would make it impossible to stretch out construction of our cities over huge expanses of land as they are stretched out now. Also, measures would have to be taken to push back our overly extended cities into more manageable arenas of human activity. As we can see, corporate government has no plans to do any of this, even though doing it is necessary to reduce energy use.

Too much energy is used in getting people to work, and allowing them to try to escape our ugly cities. Many of our cities are quite frankly pure hell to live in. There is little escape from noise pollution, few clean public spaces of any real beauty, and a boring monotony in our public space. Our cities are making people ill, and most try to escape the cities as much as they can afford. That uses up a lot of fuel.

Simply investing in a really functioning public transit around our country would take a tremendous federal commitment to change the energy inefficient system of public transport we are presently saddled with. There currently are ZERO signs that any of big business and government agencies at almost all levels see any need to change their behaviors, and hence ours. There is nothing on the books other than continuing to fund huge amounts of pavement stretching into infinity.

This is not the time (nor do I have the time now) to discuss the many ways that energy policy must be redirected. Simply enough to just say that American government and Big Business, contrary to how they project themselves in their propaganda, are not interested in taking any measures to conserve energy use in a real manner. They are lying to us when thy talk about being Green. They are ignoring our needs, and are destroying the word for future generations all because they simply want to keep making money in the same old manners they have grown accustomed to. To reduce energy use, our cities must be made into livable places, which most are not.