Indiana's Inconvenient Truth: Biggest producer of carbon dioxide from coal in the nation

[IndyOp]

John Blair, head of Valley Watch, the Evansville-based environmental group.... Blair is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer with a history of engaging in civil disobedience when appeals to reason and fact fail. Since January, he has exchanged his bullhorn for the microphone, giving presentations about global warming based on training he received from Al Gore's Climate Project.

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In a phone conversation from the Valley Watch offices, Blair elaborated on what he calls Indiana's inconvenient truth.

"Indiana is the biggest producer of carbon dioxide from coal in the nation," he said. "And since the nation really exceeds everybody else by so much, I suspect that we're one of the biggest polluters in the world."

Critics might call that hyperbole, but the facts are on Blair's side.

According to a July 2006 study by the Environmental Integrity Project (EIP), Indiana has five of the nation's 50 dirtiest power plants, the most of any state.

EIP is a five-year-old, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization created by former EPA attorneys that advocates for more effective enforcement of environmental laws.

And an international body of scientists called the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has released several reports recently that offer evidence of a clear connection between human actions - most notably, the burning of fossil fuels like coal - and global climate change.

The IPPC's April 4, 2007, "Report to Policy Makers" states: "Global greenhouse gas emissions have grown since pre-industrial times, with an increase of 70 percent between 1970 and 2004."

The energy sector provided the largest growth in global greenhouse gas during the period - 145 percent.

Indiana gets 95 percent of its electricity from coal.

***

At his own expense, Blair took the Climate Project's three-day training in Nashville, Tenn., in January. The program delved into the details behind each slide of Gore's Keynote presentation that formed the basis of the Oscar-winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.

Gore participated in the training, and Blair, who noted he had not previously been a big fan, was impressed with Gore's intellect and ability to communicate.

"More than anything else I was impressed with his phenomenal level of commitment to make sure that this job gets done," Blair said.

The Climate Project has trained 1,000 citizens to give general presentations on global warming, but Blair has a unique interpretation.

Most of the people who have come to my presentations so far have already read the IPCC reports and seen Gore's movie," he said.

So Blair is more interested in providing details about Indiana's contribution to the problem, especially sources in southwestern Indiana.

"There are two industries here that put out more toxic pollution than Cook County, Ill., Los Angeles County and Orange County, Calif., combined," he said, referring to AK Steel in Rockport and Duke Energy's Gibson Station power plant near Princeton.

"Those three counties have a total population of 18 million people, and the industries here are from counties that have a combined population of less than 30,000," he said.

Blair thinks this fact illustrates the relative significance of the pollution in his part of the Hoosier state.

"It really puts it in a perspective that most people have not heard before," he said.

In particular, Blair said, Indiana must find alternatives to coal.

MORE of the interview here: http://www.bloomingtonalternative.com/articles/2007/05/23/8330



Valley Watch website
http://www.valleywatch.net/valleywatch/index.asp

[urgk]

1. Some ???s

Assuming that it may be some time before the country will be convinced to switch to non-carbon energy sources, is there no way to make gathering the byproducts of coal energy profitable to the coal companies? Or at least a way to sell concentrated pollutants to offset part of the cost of containing them? I don't know enough about it to do anything but guess, but doesn't somebody use the waste to do or make something?

I know the environmental impact that the mining itself presents, but as long as they're going to burn coal, maybe somebody should see if they can filter it (whatever, technically, that may entail) profitably.

This is almost a tangent, but the more I hear about sustainable resources, the more I think that the best way to introduce them into a (semi) free market system is to make them profitable. The minute we convince the million and billionaires that going green has incredible profit potential, we won't be able to stop them from hugging trees and wearing hemp.

[IndyOp]

2. Wow! Damn good questions...

I know little about this issue, but I need to take the responsibility to learn. I know that there are "clean burning" coal burning power plants -- I think they are "clean" because they filter release of particulates into the air. I don't know about release of CO2.

Gore talks about "carbon capture" in An Inconvenient Truth and he and Sir Richard Branson have created a fund to award $25 million to someone who develops "a commercially viable design which results in the removal of anthropogenic, atmospheric greenhouse gases so as to contribute materially to the stability of Earth’s climate."


Carbon Capture
http://www.co2capture.org.uk/


The Virgin Earth Challenge
http://www.environmentalleader.com/2007/02/09/branson-gore-announce-25-million-virgin-earth-challenge/

http://www.virginearth.com/