“And yet, we will still need coal.”

Of course we will. Coal and nuclear are the cheapest ways we can generate the power we need and build new plants for the additional power we will need (no, conservation will never be the solution, and that's without accounting for growth in population and economy in the future not to mention getting more computers into more people's hands, for example). Nuclear is fought by the ignorant and by the misguided; nuclear is also horribly expensive to set up, unlike coal. (It seems to be competitive insofar as operating costs go — both coal and nuclear are cheap; nuke plants don't use much fuel.) Here in Iowa or near it, at least one new coal plant has been built and nearby (in Iowa) a new coal plant is getting approval (though it is being fought by numerous activists). I'm not only situated near the true Main Street of the USA, Interstate Highway 80 (ask any trucker), but also near the main line between the Powder River Basin coal source(s) in Wyoming and coal plants to the East. (Around West Virginia and Virginia you will also see lots of long coal trains.) This (Iowa) is serious railroading country, with long rails with few welds and concrete ties. Serious money goes into this roadbed because it's for serious railroading, including coal train after coal train after coal train, which impress me when they go by more than any super-efficient, modern-for-decades double-stack train. Coal plants are voracious consumers. And a lot of our coal goes all the way to Newport News — to be shipped overseas. Coal is big, big, big.

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/business/stori…

[UP, Iowa and elsewhere]

http://www.uprr.com/customers/energy/coal/index…

http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/maps/sysmap.shtml

[WV, VA ...]

http://www.csx.com/?fuseaction=customers.coal_s…

The present is coal, supplemented or replaced where possible or necessary by natural gas, either to supply peak load capability or to reduce air pollution (by replacing current coal or oil plants).

Now just think if coal liquefaction becomes a practical, economic short-to-medium-term way to supplement oil imports, which likely will triple in the next twenty years barring external interferences.

The feds intervened to make it easier for coal strip miners to evade land restoration an pollution prevention requirements.
It's a big problem, with conflicting needs to be met.

Then, I saw a man showing offf a T-shirt with Obama portrayed as a monkey.
I hoped we had left that kind of crude racism behind, but there was the T-shirt, with happy onlookers all around.

It made me sick. For the moment, my sympathies for WV are not at the forefront of my thoughts.,
I'm ashamed of my America., .

When I was reading on the coal mining issue yesterday, in addition to the profound loss of fathers and sons and grandfathers and brothers in the mines, I found that also we have exported coal … continually, literally selling away huge mountain tops of land …some day, there wont be any more mountain tops of coal, either.

I can see the arguments for not all at once destabilizing the economy of an entire state, and not destabilizing trade income, and not destabilizing the rest of the nation in terms of say, heating fuel in winter. But like I imagine you are too, I'd like to know where there are progressions away from 'the old way', rather than bus. as usual. Hopefully, another topic for another time at tmv.

dr.e