“We must halt all new coal plants now, and we must begin shutting down existing ones as soon as possible. Otherwise we should face up to the truth
I’ll be attending an inauguration party tomorrow, and I’m glad we’ve got Obama rather than McCain, for sure. I hope that Obama really does make a serious effort to follow through on his commitment to “change Washington,” although many of his cabinet appointments make me skeptical. There’s no question but that the only way Washington will ever change, under Obama or someone else in the future, is through the emergence of a well-organized grassroots movement with enough power and political independence to take on the banking establishment and the military-industrial-fossil fuel complex.

We’ve already seen some of the Obama policy weaknesses. His virtual silence on the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza caused by Israel’s wildly disproportionate response to Hamas missiles is one of them. And at the confirmation hearings in D.C. for Energy Secretary-designate Steven Chu and EPA-head Lisa Jackson, there were problematic comments made by both about dirty and destructive coal, an energy source that has no place in a clean energy future. Here’s what they said:

Chu: “I am optimistic we can figure out how to use those resources in a clean way. I’m very hopeful that this will occur and I think that we will be using that great natural resource.”

Jackson: “Coal is a vital resource in this country. It is right now the source of generation of about 50 percent of our power. And I think that it is also important for us to say in the same sentence that it is — the emissions from coal-fired power plants are — the largest contributor to global warming emissions. So we have to face square-shouldered the future and the issues of coal and then move American ingenuity towards addressing them.”

Unfortunately, when Jackson talks about “American ingenuity,” she means the process of capturing carbon and putting it under the ground. It’s unfortunate because this carbon capture and sequestration process is nowhere near being commercially viable for many years, and it’s very unlikely it ever will be. There are huge questions about if it is safe to put so much liquefied CO2 in the ground. There is no question, none at all, that a rapid shift to serious efficiency and renewables is a much, much better plan.

We should be clear: the support for coal from politicians who are otherwise liberal- or progressive-minded is primarily a political response. It’s because they’re afraid of being targeted by the coal lobby, or because they don’t want to look like they’re unconcerned about the relatively small number of coal mining jobs