Many in US coal country oppose new emission regulations
Friday, 06 Nov 2009
AFP reported that coal super powers China, India and the US are set to dominate world climate talks next month but even in the heartland of US coal there are doubts their re branded fuel can be part of the solution.
In the rugged tree cloaked hills of rural West Virginia, coal is as much a way of life as bluegrass music, pickup trucks or the hundreds of wood clad baptist churches that spot the countryside.
Mountain tops have been removed to get it, endless trains hurtle across the state carrying it and atop roadside heaps every conceivable piece of industrial equipment is employed to lift, drop, clean or shift lumps of the black sooty rock.
Generations living in and around the Ohio River Valley which forms the state's south western flank have mined coal and earned a living doing so. Coal is, almost literally, the bedrock of the local economy.
For negotiators packed in Copenhagen's urbane conference rooms this December, Appalachia and its coal production will be a world away but it could hardly be more relevant.
Responsible for 41% of global carbon dioxide energy emissions, coal is cheap, plentiful and increasingly popular. It is also horrendously dirty by far the most polluting fossil fuel according to the US government's Environmental Protection Agency. The EPA's figures show coal produces 50% more carbon dioxide than oil and twice as much as natural gas in electricity production.
