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Down With King Coal! Why
we should not mine, transport or burn coal
by Christine Frank / December 2005 issue of Socialist Action
newspaper
Despite
the massive quantities of greenhouses gases produced by coal-burning power
plants and with total disregard for their effect on Earth’s climate, the Bush
administration is pressing for more of these monstrosities to be built.
While
the United States, the largest polluter on the planet, should be adopting
100 percent clean and renewable energy, government and industry are
planning to take advantage of the vast coal reserves still underground.
U.S. utility companies have unveiled a scheme to build 100 new coal plants
over the next 10 to 15 years to replace old ones that must be phased
out.
The Interior West alone is to get 26 of them.
Nearly
all are expected to use the old, dirty technology of pulverized coal. The
largest type
electricity
generator will have a capacity of 1000 megawatts and cost $1 billion to
build. Each will belch out six million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
This is enough to raise the concentrations to 10 times the preindustrial
level, which was at 270 parts per million!
China
has the largest coal reserves in the world, with 60-70 percent of its power
being derived from it. Its burgeoning economy, along with that of India, is
demanding ever more energy. China’s coal consumption outstrips the rest of
the world and is projected to increase by 50 percent.
There
is a perpetual yellow haze hanging over many North Chinese cities because
of widespread use of coal-fired boilers, locomotives, and domestic
stoves. And the pollution soon
spreads beyond China’s borders—even to the United States.
Coal
was originally plant debris that accumulated over millions of years in moist
bogs, was then buried under sedimentary deposits, which compressed the peat
into seams and subjected it to geothermal heat. This process transformed it
into a fossil fuel. Although
the
world has three centuries of this fuel left in the ground, there are many
reasons for why it should remain there.
The
many problems with coal extraction
Two
major trends have boosted coal production: the mechanization of underground
mining and the increase in surface extraction. Coal mining harms the land, surface
water, groundwater, and even the air.
In underground operations, waste materials are piled at
the
surface creating runoff that both pollutes and alters the flow of local
streams.
As
rain percolates through the slag heaps, soluble components such as sulfates,
calcium, carbonates and bicarbonates are dissolved, elevating total
dissolved solids (TDS) in local bodies of water. The result is water so
degraded that it is undrinkable and unusable by agriculture or industry.
Where
coal seams contain abundant pyrite, acid drainage results. When that ore is
exposed to water, it forms sulfuric acid and iron. The acidity dissolves metals
like manganese, zinc and nickel, which are toxic to aquatic life. Some of
these metals bioaccumulate in the freshwater food chain. Bottom-dwelling organisms can smother as
iron settles out.
Sulfurous
compounds such as hydrogen sulfate enter the water. Groundwater or streams
carrying it are often colored by yellow-orange precipitates. During the early
1990s, acid drainage from hundreds of abandoned coal mines in Appalachia
infiltrated more than 20,000
km.
of streams, yellowing their waters, beds, and banks—and destroying the life
in them.
The
strip-mining of coal is the most injurious to the land and its watersheds.
Entire Appalachian mountaintops are dynamited and shaved off like so much butter
to get at the still plentiful soft coal veins below. Gargantuan draglines,
bulldozers, and dump trucks remove the overburden and deposit it into the hollows—burying
hamlets, filling in streams, and obliterating woodlands.
The
devastation is like a scene from “The Lord of the Rings.” The machines operate
24-seven in four states, scarring a land area that will eventually exceed
that of Delaware. They unearth 145 million tons a year, 15 percent of the
nation’s total.
Many
retired coal miners are residents of the hollows. Along with environmentalists, some have fought to stop the
devastation of the countryside. They have challenged the coal companies’
right to destroy waterways and forests by arguing in court that it violates
federal environmental laws—but to little avail.
While
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is passing out permits to strip mine like
candy at a Founders Day Parade, the Department of the Interior, which is staffed
with appointees from the industry and their lobbyists, allows the horrors
of mountaintop removal to continue despite the outcry against them.
Any
human excavation in the planet’s crust at great depths can bring about
seismic activity. This is true of gold-mining and rock-quarrying. Long-wall
mining induces tremors not by blasting but by carving away coal along the
length of a seam and allowing the overburden to collapse in areas that have
already been mined. The collapse redistributes stress in the
overlying
rock and coal, making it fracture or burst and giving rise to tremors.
The
owners of the Trail Mountain Coal Mine in Utah plan to extend its shallow,
underground operation into an area about half a mile from Joes Valley Dam
and Reservoir. Seismologists have estimated that it could cause an
earthquake as large as magnitude 3.9 around the dam, thereby loosing the
dam’s grout curtain and creating a damaging slow leak.
Coal-mining-induced
quakes are highly common in Utah. The
biggest event was a magnitude 4.2 at the Willow Creek Mine, about 30 miles
from Joes Valley Dam, which triggered dangerous rock falls that disrupted
traffic on a highway and a rail line.
The
preparation process carried out near the mines generates huge quantities of
wastes—on the order of tens of millions of tons per year. Included are the solid
wastes from the mines called “gob,” left over from coal washing and
screening and the sludge from treating acid drainage. The land where the wastes
are dumped is ruined.
Mine
wastes have been used to construct dams around disposal lagoons to contain
liquefied contaminants, but they are not nearly strong enough for the
purpose. In 1971, a dam collapsed
in Buffalo Creek, West Virginia, causing a flood that claimed 125 lives and
resulted
in millions in property damage. A similar accident occurred in 2000 when a
72-acre lagoon burst, releasing 250 million gallons of lava-like sludge
that killed all the freshwater life in the Big Sandy River and its
tributaries.
Trucks,
railroads, slurry pipelines, and barges all transport coal, and they affect
air and water quality either directly or indirectly. In addition to the pollution
from the vehicles themselves, there are ambient air and health impacts from
blowing coal dust. All stages of
the operation—the mining, processing, and burning of coal—affect workers’
health. Inhalation
of
dust containing crystalline silica during highwall drilling leads to black
lung disease. Mercury vapors or dust containing mercury taken into the
system cause neurological damage. At great depths, heat stroke and exhaustion
can be a hazard for the miners, not to
mention
cave-ins and gas explosions.
Air pollution from coal combustion
The
greatest threat derived from the use of coal to the health of the planet
and all life on it comes from its burning. The fuel contains many trace
elements that are released during combustion. They end up in the
atmosphere, local surface waters, and the land where waste residues are
dumped.
The
900 million tons of coal that are consumed release toxic heavy metals such
as nickel, mercury, arsenic, chromium, and cadmium in significant
quantities. They cause many acute health problems, and chronic exposure to
them over time is carcinogenic.
Dioxins
and mercury, because of their chemical structure and the fact that they do
not degrade, persist in the environment virtually forever. Dioxins function
as dangerous hormone disruptors that can mimic enzymes in the endocrine
gland system and interfere with the reproduction of many species at crucial
stages of embryonic development. The fertility
of
many species from frogs to humans is threatened.
Methylmercury
bioaccumulatates and concentrates in the food chain, beginning with small
aquatic organisms and fish and making its way into the larger predators and
humans who consume them. Mercury blood levels are now alarmingly high in 10
percent of American women of childbearing age. This does not bode well for
their offspring.
Exposure
to pollutants from coal combustion induces asthma attacks, respiratory
infections, and dramatic changes in lung function. Asthma is becoming
epidemic in children living in urban areas. Breathing in particulate matter
cuts short the lives of some 30,000 people in this country.
The nightmare of acid rain
In
the 1950s, there were no pollution controls on household coal furnaces,
industrial boilers, or locomotives still in use, which all released vast amounts
of fly ash. Ironically, the alkalinity of the ash helped to reduce the acid
effects of other emissions. Twenty years later, there were no more steam
engines and home use of coal, and coke production was declining. Instead,
power plants burned three-quarters of all coal consumed.
With
the passage of air-quality standards, virtually all power plant boilers
were forced to install electrostatic precipitators that captured nearly all
of the fly ash generated. These controls had eliminated unsightly
particulate pollution but had also stripped practically all alkaline and
metallic oxides from flue gases.
With
coal combustion becoming more efficient, nearly perfect oxidation of all
the sulfur present was achieved, and the higher combustion temperatures
also produced more nitrous oxides. Although the emissions became less visible,
they became more deadly, containing hot mixtures of carbon dioxide and
sulfur and nitrous oxides. The gases now reside longer in the atmosphere,
where they produce more acidifying sulfates and nitrates.
The
process was helped along by the construction of taller stacks, forcing the
hotter gases almost to the mid-troposphere, enabling them to be carried on
the prevailing winds. The increased use of air conditioning contributed to
acidification by shifting the season of peak electric load from winter to summer,
when there is a greater abundance of hydroxyl radicals to oxidize more
sulfur compounds.
Coal-fired
power plant emissions account for two-thirds of the nation’s sulfur dioxide
and
one-third
of the nitrous oxide. Acid rain results when sulfur dioxide and nitrogen
oxide mix with the moisture in the atmosphere. It can be carried and deposited
far from the source.
The
pollutants from the Ohio River basin, which has a huge concentration of coal-fired
power plants, end up in New York, New England, Eastern Canada, and the Atlantic
Ocean. The world first learned of acid rain when the Swedes discovered that
their forests were dying off from German industrial pollution blowing northward.
There
are two basic mechanisms of acid deposition. One is the leaching of
alkaline cations
(positively-charged
ions) from foliage and soils, which results in the micronutrient
deprivation of trees. The other is the toxic release of aluminum from the
soil, which damages fine roots and weakens their capacity to absorb water
and nutrients.
Afflicted
trees become more vulnerable to drought, the presence of ground-level
ozone, and the accumulation of heavy metals. Each year they gain less wood.
Fungi and bark beetles eventually invade to finish off a dying tree.
The
acidification of our lakes and streams impacts freshwater wildlife. North
American rivers now contain one and a half to two times as much sulfate as
they did in pre-industrial times. Those in Europe carry three to four times
as much.
The
Adirondack Mountains in New York have been especially affected. Because the
rocks in the area lack acid-buffering carbonate minerals, Lake Placid has
become acidified to such an extent that it is completely devoid of
phytoplankton and now appears perfectly clear all the way to the bottom.
A
lack of phytoplankton, of course, drastically affects the food chain.
Waters with a pH below 4.5 make it extremely difficult for acid-sensitive insects,
crustaceans, gastropods, and fish to survive. This threatens the biodiversity of our ecosystems.
Enhanced
by ultraviolet radiation, nitrogen oxides contribute to the increase in
ground-level ozone, which affects pulmonary function in humans. Also, by interfering
with the ability of plants to produce and store starches and proteins,
tropospheric ozone makes vegetation more susceptible to disease, insect
pests, and other pollutants—thus affecting food production.
The
problem of air pollution has gone to such an extreme that U.S. national
parks are now blanketed with a permanent haze. Visitors can no longer enjoy
the scenic vistas they used to. What were once pristine wilderness areas
are now plagued with poisonous ozone and acid rain.
Families
taking their asthmatic children out for some “fresh mountain air” are
actually putting them at risk. The giant sequoias of California are
endangered by contaminants drifting from the industrial complex around San
Francisco Bay.
A contribution to global warming
Coal
provides 23 percent of the world’s energy. U.S. coal-fired power plants,
numbering nearly 600, release about one billion tons of carbon dioxide per
year, amounting to 18 percent of all greenhouse gases spewed forth in this
country. Worldwide, coal burning accounts for 36 percent of the carbon
emissions and is their single largest source. Last year, five billion tons
of coal were burned, which emitted 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide.
Coal
mining also releases methane, another powerful gas that contributes to
global warming. The world’s mean surface temperature is on the rise, its
ice masses are shrinking, the permafrost is melting, sea levels are rising,
ocean waters are heating, violent storms such as Hurricane Katrina are
increasing in frequency and intensity, and there are more droughts
and
floods. This frightening reality makes a powerful argument to end use of
all fossil fuels, especially coal, here and now.
Yet,
there are those that insist that it can be burned cleanly, and the carbon
it produces can be securely sequestered. How true is this?
Some
claim that coal gasification can be clean. By heating it to 2000 degrees
Fahrenheit in a sealed chamber, adding steam, injecting a small amount of oxygen
(not enough to combust it), the coal breaks down into its constituent
building blocks.
The
gases that emerge include carbon monoxide, hydrogen, sulfur and nitrogen
compounds, plus trace elements such as mercury—as well commercially useful chemicals
such as ammonia compounds used for fertilizers and phenol and naphtha, used
as solvents. These are all chemicals that cause harm to the environment.
The other outcome of the coal-gasification procedure is 200 million cubic
feet per day of carbon dioxide (4 million tons/year),
hardly
a small matter.
Those
people who want to apply a techno-fix to every problem generated by
capitalist industry advocate carbon capture and storage (CCS). One of the
few existing coal-gasification plants is located in North Dakota and in
this case burns lignite (the least mature form of coal, with 35 percent
moisture content), which must first have the moisture removed before it is
gasified.
After
going through those two steps, the unwanted carbon dioxide is pressurized
at 2000 pounds per square inch and piped to an oil field in Saskatchewan, Canada.
There it is forced below ground in order to recover petroleum that is hard
to get at. The carbon is supposed to remain one mile below the surface indefinitely.
It
takes tremendous energy to compress the gas, which heats to very high
levels and must then be cooled down, requiring even more energy. How
efficient is that? Plus, the method of enhanced oil recovery using carbon
dioxide, (which is becoming more common), only perpetuates the use of
petroleum and creates more CO2 to be disgorged, thus sustaining a vicious
circle.
Currently,
CCS is used on a significant scale only by Norway beneath the North Sea. No
one can guarantee that sequestered carbon, once injected, will stay put in
its burial vaults, undisturbed or otherwise.
Earthquakes
or geologic stresses could easily cause it to come back and haunt us.
Studies to date have monitored injection sites for only a few years. Even very
low rates of leakage could re-release enough CO2 to pose major problems
within decades.
Nor
is there any sound assurance that it will not contaminate aquifers. At
best, it is only a temporary solution, and we need long-term ones in order
to restore the health of the planet. The only sound answer is to wean
ourselves off fossil fuels altogether. As outlined above, there all too
many problems with every aspect of coal extraction, transport, and use.
When
the planet was first formed 4.5 billion years ago, there was a huge mass of
toxins and radioactivity roiling at the surface. Gradually, geologic forces
worked them down into the mantel, where radioactive elements such as uranium
generate the heat that keeps the magma churning. With the advent of life,
Earth’s atmosphere developed, and the surface of the planet further
purified.
However,
since the Industrial Revolution, capitalist production has been steadily
dredging up toxic heavy metals from the depths, releasing them into Earth’s
four matrixes—atmosphere, hydrosphere, lithosphere, and biosphere—contaminating
them and choking the life in them. It is time to end these dangerous
practices.
We
must adopt policies that assist Mother Nature in restoring her ecosystems
back to a harmonious state. For
that reason, we should oppose all attempts by the U.S. government to expand
the use of coal as a substitute for oil, the production of which is about to
enter serious decline. There is no need for the continued combustion of any
fossil fuel. Renewable
technologies
are fully developed and already in use.
The
Carbon Barons are growing steadily richer from government handouts and by
gouging consumers. The $4.9 billion proposed by the Bush administration for
so-called “clean coal” development can be used instead to commission even
more wind farms and solar parks and
to
train coal miners to install them.
The
American people must get out into the streets and demand clean energy. They
have no choice if their children and grandchildren are to have a
future. A National March on
Washington for 2006 to Stop Global Warming is currently being discussed
among activists
who
want to build a movement to force the government and the corporations to
take measures to mitigate climate change. This is an important first step
in launching an ongoing, worldwide campaign around the crucial,
life-and-death issue of climate change.
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