Conservation, not coal

Tuesday, November 20, 2007

A letter to the editor of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

Gov. Jim Doyle supports carbon capture and sequestration at coal plants to help alleviate global warming (Doyle backs clean coal plant in Illinois, Nov. 14). It sounds easy, but is it?

The process, never tried, is extremely expensive in money and energy, and far from being "clean," it emits more of other kinds of air pollution and perpetuates the same old dirty, earth-destroying, thirsty process of coal strip mining, robbing neighboring farms and ranches and wild areas of much-needed water.

The article neglected to point out that coal miners in Appalachia are blowing up mountains and tossing the earth into streams, thus poisoning the drinking water of both local people and flora and fauna and leaving behind what look like huge expanses of desert. The carbon capture and sequestration idea simply comes too late. Global warming is happening much too fast for this new process to be useful.

Our best hope is conservation. Through good conservation planning, including smart growth, mass transit, building efficiency and a carbon tax in place of the income tax, we can make a national effort to significantly lower our carbon dioxide emissions. The average Western European produces half as much carbon dioxide as the average American. I think Americans can do even better. Let's try.

Anne Epstein
Milwaukee