http://www.mikeruppert.blogspot.com/

A REMAINDER TO ROUND OFF IN OUR FAVOR – DIVIDE BARACK OBAMA BY CLEAN COAL

.........CLEAN COAL -- Barack Obama is going to face what may be his first presidential "balancing" with coal. We have all grown sick and tired of the blatantly dishonest ads rub by the coal lobbies about "clean coal". You know, the ones nailing Obama to a cross of-his-own-making by telling us that clean coal was our future during the campaign. There isn't one single clean-coal plant operating anywhere and there never will be. Even BEFORE the economic crash started, new coal-fired plants were being built willy-nilly. They were sorta supposed to be clean-coal but – after the plants were finished – the builders said, "Gee there's not enough money for carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) right now. We'll come back and do it later, (thanks Julian
Darley). All those dirty plants are going online now.

How much money will there be for CCS when the Dow is at 5,000, when we have 15% unemployment, civil unrest, you name it?

CCS is a hugely expensive, energy intensive and resource-wasting proposition that will solve nothing. For unknown reasons, George W, Bush's Energy Secretary Sam Bodman pulled the permit for the only clean-coal plant that was about to go online.

The other half of the clean-coal lie is that all of the destruction and toxicity of mining and burning coal has been somehow remaindered (gristed) out of the equation and somehow "gone away" Well, there's a huge chunk of Tennessee that's just been poisoned by a billion tons of totally toxic coal ash, filled with arsenic, deadly heavy metals and carcinogens. "Clean coal" never addresses the ash from burning coal or even the toxins released when coal is merely "mined". (When mountaintops are removed, along with all the trees and wildlife.

Some groups have taken to airing TV spots that totally strip clean-coal down to the lie that it is. I can't wait for someone to start airing ads exposing the American Petroleum Institute's Lauren Hutton campaign of disinformation. That woman should be truly ashamed for the lies she has been so well paid to tell.

If THE PEAK OIL/SUSTAINABILITY MOVEMENT has the slightest bit of political savvy it will recognize that our war is not one to convince everybody of all of our positions at once. Sisyphus would know better. But what happens if we knock legs out from under the defenders of the old, suicidal paradigm one at a time? As the house collapsed we would be the only ones left standing. As far as I'm concerned, the TVA spill in Tennessee was one of the greatest blessings ever. It is the club with which clean coal can be beaten to death very quickly… in a way that our new President might well be grateful for.

I strongly believe that Mr. Obama knows all of the problems with coal. I also suspect that one of his tough choices to get the nomination and get elected was to deal with the energy lobby. But he can be cut loose if enough pressure builds behind the TVA debacle.

If the Peak Oil movement has a lick of sense it will drop everything and spend its time, money and effort delivering the coup de grace to clean coal by flooding the Obama administration and congress with emails, calls and letters exposing the hoax of clean coal. Henry Waxman, the new Chair of the House Energy Committee and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar should be buried in correspondence.

We all know the names Campbell, Simmons, Heinberg, Darley, Savinar, Hirsch, Bartlett, Bartlett, Quinn-Bachman, etc. At any one time all the giants are waging their wars and doing their great works. But what if – on just one issue – they all got together and focused their energy on just that? The one that's right in front of us; a battle where a great victory can be won; where our growing influence can have a deep impact?

I repeat myself to say that this administration is willing and eager to listen. But if we do not speak up who is to blame? For years I said that such efforts were useless. I was absolutely correct. It is the collapse of the economy and industrialized civilization that has beaten some parts of Washington into a state of semi-reasonableness. Their calculators cannot handle this problem.

I remember being so angry after leaving the last ASPO-USA conference in Sacramento. I proposed to myself and a few others (in semi-jest) that instead of having an Association for the Study of Peak Oil we should found a rival organization and call it, the Association for the Response to Peak Oil. We need that… right now. We need to lobby with organized force and resources.

We don't have anything like that…

MCR