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burning coal makes mercury/mercury hurts kids
Facts:
1. Coal burning power plants release mercury particles into the atmosphere with well documented health effects given the fact that mercury (the stuff in thermometers) is a poison.
2. We have the technology to burn coal cleaner, but it costs more to do so.
3. We tend to want the cheap energy of coal burning power plants without the mercury poisoning, but we’re less concerned about the poisoning effects of mercury if it affects someone else.
4. People with the means to keep coal burning power plants out of their neighborhood, tend to exercise that power.
4. Poor people don’t have much money. Money is power. So they have more coal burning power plants in their neighborhoods. And they and their kids and their unborn babies tend to suffer more harm as a result.
5. If people with power had more coal burning power plants in their own neighborhoods, they would be more likely to insist that we all spend a little more money to build clean power plants.
Am I missing something, or shouldn’t we all insist that no more dirty power plants be built? And that we spend money to clean up the ones that are spewing the mercury over poor people? Whose children suffer memory loss and greater learning disabilities with all the mercury wrecking havoc in their brains? One in six children are born at risk of this, according to the EPA, and most of them are poor kids who can’t move away from the flipping power plants. Excuse me, I got a little annoyed there.
February 11th, 2008 at 4:39 am
how in the ____ did this become good American policy in the first place? i am really glad the court stood up to it and struck it down…
the thing is when policy is made i’ve seen it, and it’s a lot like making sausage: messy and ugly and it smells.
but since it is made behind closed doors typically, and especially something like this usually doesn’t make the news for people to know about it, how can we as concerned Christians make some sort of difference?
February 14th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
Absolutely! I wouldn’t want a coal plant anywhere near where I (or my loved ones) live.
I think our insistence on not building dirty power plants has to be combined with some embrace of clean, carbon-free energy sources–like nuclear energy. The fact is that even if we reduce our individual energy use, the overall demand for energy is going to increase dramatically as the global population increases and as more countries become industrialized. Industrialization, for all its problems, has brought a lot of people out of extreme poverty in countries like India and China. If people have to choose between poverty and a small risk of mercury poisoning, I’m guessing they’ll choose the latter. (My dad just got back from China, and the pollution there was astounding–and it’s so tragic how the poorest are suffering the most. And yet people are moving to the industrial areas en masse because it beats the poverty in the rural areas.)
I’m all for solar panels and windmills, but the only proven. large-scale source of carbon-neutral energy is nuclear. France gets 80% of its electricity from nuclear, but we only get 20%. What’s up with that? So we’re stuck with coal burning plants for over half our electricity.
Which is why I was so disappointed with our Democratic candidates when they all pledged in Nevada to prevent a repository for spent nuclear fuel at Yucca Mountain. Not that the Republicans have been leading the charge on clean energy!
February 15th, 2008 at 9:32 pm
Ken,
Who is this amazing Bill Elkington? Somehow I got to his blog via yours. Oh, yeah, yours is amazing too. Really, it is!
Renee
February 16th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Hey Renee, amazing Bill is Ken’s brother-in-law-in-law (his sister-in-law’s husband, to be more precise).
February 20th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Steven is right. When policy is made, everyone goes into the room with their own ideas of “right” and then the fun begins–and in the end, in the name of “getting something done” and compromise, we walk out of the room with something that satisfies no one, and tends to make absolutely no sense. In the game of ‘winning’ in politics, we all lose. No one wins. And that has become as much a victory to opposing sides as true victory. ‘I didn’t get what I wanted, but hey, I stopped him from getting anything he wanted, so I win!’ Its nuts.
I really hope one of these guys who promises change can deliver. I’m not optomistic….
February 23rd, 2008 at 7:43 am
steve,I heard a prominent evangelical leader who is politically conservative, a nationally recognized leader, say that the current administration had pretty much delegated it’s energy policy to the energy companies. ken