Is it crunch time for coal?

From Down Unda'

TERRY Anders turned up for his first day of work as the glory days of Victoria's brown coal industry were coming to an end. It was the early 1990s, and the industry was heading towards privatisation. Roughly 10,000 workers were thrown out of work over a handful of years as international companies first swallowed, then broke up, the old State Electricity Commission.

"It was a very good job to get into at a young age, but it very quickly went from being a comfortable, secure job to quite a bit of uncertainty," Anders says.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/is-it-crunch-time-for-coal-20080613-2qbd.html

at all.. gasified coal. JUST ANOTHER SCHEME BY A TAX SUBSIDIZED CORPORATIST'S

PHOTOS OF DEVASTATION
http://www.ohvec.org/galleries/mountaintop_removal/007/

http://www.chimpsternation.com/forum?c=showthread&ThreadID=1293

http://www.alternet.org/environment/33587
Though most people probably associate coal with the bygone Industrial Age, the Bush administration considers it an essential part of the nation's energy mix. At least 114 new coal-burning power plants are currently in the building or permitting stages around the country. According to a 2006 report from the US Energy Information Administration, US power consumption from coal is expected to rise 1.9 percent per year through 2030, significantly more than the expected rise in energy consumption from petroleum (1.1 percent) and natural gas (0.7 percent).

http://earthislandinstitute.net/journal/index.php/eij/article/moving_mountains1/
In rural Kentucky counties, it is not uncommon to find people still using wells for drinking water, and that was the case with the Urias family. The constant blasting on the mining sites around them shifted the water table, and their well dried up. When they had another well dug, it failed as well. So far a third well – which cost four or five thousand dollars to drill – hasn’t dried up, but the chemical-laden water used to wash the coal loaded off the devastated hills around the Urias homestead has leached into the groundwater table. Arsenic levels in the one well that hasn’t gone dry are 130 times in excess of what the EPA deems safe.

http://www.theage.com.au/national/is-it-crunch-time-for-coal-20080613-2qbd.html
Australia's brown coal faces the end - focuses on someone who works their and the split they feel between job and environment.

And a story about the people paying the direct costs of two energy sources - coal v wind. They both present their case.
http://www.alternet.org/environment/47997

Wind vs. Coal: False Choices in the Battle to Resolve Our Energy Crisis

By Tara Lohan, AlterNet. Posted February 15, 2007.

If you want to know what we can do to resolve our energy crisis, look no further than West Virginia. Understanding a recent battle over wind development in coal country could help us all.


When you cross the border into West Virginia along I-64 the welcome sign that used to say, "West Virginia: Wild and Wonderful," now says, "West Virginia: Open for Business."

It is a sign of the times.

According to a few area residents, the sign change coincidently occurred this fall around the same time that the state decided to approve an application for development of the largest wind farm east of the Mississippi.

West Virginia, long known to be an energy sacrifice zone for its sizable contribution to our nation's coal supply at the expense of Appalachians, is now beginning to diversify. But not everyone is excited about the prospect.

In the more pastoral eastern side of the state, which has thus far been spared, thanks to its lack of coal, the proposed 124-tower industrial scale Beech Ridge Energy Wind Farm would be built along ridgetops on the eastern front of the Alleghenies in scenic Greenbrier County.

Unfortunately for us, that number is way too high.

--p!