Spirituality and Ecological Hope

Fostering Ecological Hope
Today, again, from Margaret Swedish:

I don’t usually post twice in a day, but I just saw this article about Sen. Barack Obama in the Washington Post and wanted to cite it as a great example of the contradictions that will plague politicians in the global warming policy debate.

Because it will matter in the presidential campaigns, it is important that we follow this closely. Obama is considered to be pretty good on the issue, supporting greater fuel efficiency, cap and trade regimens for carbon trading, and support for alternative renewable fuels.

But as you will see in this article, he comes from a coal state, and the politics of the coal industry and the politics of foreign oil seem to have determined his support for coal-to-liquid (CTL) fuel technology — putting coal in our cars instead of oil. This technology is very bad news for our planet. A massive switch to this fuel would increase carbon emissions exponentially, beyond anything we have seen so far. Coal is by far and away the dirtiest of all fossil fuels

Here are a couple web pages on the dangers of CTL production, one from a West Virginia perspective, an article from the Christian Science Monitor, and the last, a post on this topic from our friends at Gristmill.

So, if CTL is so nasty, what is the attraction? Well, fear of the power of coal on voters, for one. But CTL is also being sold to us as a way to wean ourselves from dependency on foreign oil, in other words, as a national security issue. Watch for this argument. It is inevitable. But I fail to find the prospects for security in a world in which climate chaos becomes one of the overarching frameworks of our lives.

I’ll let the Gristmill have the last word:

Coal is the enemy of the human race. The coal industry is desperately trying to keep itself alive with boondoggles like CTL. There’s absolutely no reason we should help it along with huge taxpayer subsidies. Just let coal die.

[tags] dirty coal, coal-to-liquid, CTL, Barack Obama[/tags]

Photo credit: found this photo at EcoGeek.org.