With our attention focused on the Wall Street crisis and the presidential election, the George W. Bush administration took an extraordinary step last Friday to give coal companies a couple of departing gifts before the end of this year. This is the really dirty side of coal we rarely hear about.
Put aside, for a moment, that no presidential candidate can actually tell you when the 100-year-old slogan of “clean coal” can be implemented on a nationwide utility scale, or at what cost, or if the security is proven, and put aside the fact that over 10,000 coal miners have died from black lung disease in the last decade and thousands have been injured or died in accidents, and put side that millions of acres of fertile corn fields and farm land, virgin forests and waterways have been strip mined across the country.
Here’s the really dirty part of coal. First, this preface: After a year of record profits, coal operatives will receive nearly $2.8 billion in tax credits in the recent Wall Street bailout.
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