Clean Coal... Yeah, Right

When I was reading Wendell Berry's book of essays last winter, What Are People For, I remember being startled by his declaration that he will only write by daylight. What's with that? you might wonder, as I did.

Well, it's because he refuses to use electric lights any more than is necessary, since his electric power comes from coal-fired power plants. As a native Kentuckian, he knows where coal comes from and what its effects are on the place and the people.

I've thought of Berry this week each time I hear a new piece of information about the fly ash spill in Tennessee that put 5.3 million cubic yards of coal sludge into local waterways, complete with arsenic, lead and other heavy metals.

The Huffington Post has a short summary with a number of links to other stories and photos. One of those links includes an aerial video of the devastation. Looking at it, I can't help but be reminded of the latter parts of the book How Green Was My Valley, when the narrator describes how the mine tailings have buried the valley.

Those of us in the north, who often get our power from coal-burning plants as well, like to throw around the term "clean coal" and think mainly of burning the coal -- is the smoke being scrubbed before it goes out of the stack? But mining and storing the waste are two other parts of the coal picture that are a long way from being cleaned up. A Washington Post op-ed last spring detailed the number of miners dead either from accidents or disease, and the number of acres dynamited and strip-mined.

We're all responsible. (And by the way, Wendell Berry writes on a manual typewriter, too...not on a computer.)