Hillary Clinton fudged a question on mountaintop-removal mining this week during a public-radio interview. "I'm not an expert," she said - before going on to call for a compromise solution allowing the filthy and environmentally destructive mines to stay open. I've responded over at Political Climate:
So far, neither Clinton nor Obama have set out satisfactory plans for dealing with the coal industry: Both merely say that they'll invest heavily in "clean coal", despite the fact that both the Department of Energy and energy consultancies say that we're at least two decades from viable zero-emissions coal technology. Still, Clinton really should know better than to embrace mountaintop-removal mining, an especially filthy process also known as "strip mining on steroids".Mountaintop removal involves literally hacking the top off mountains in order to reach the coal that lies beneath: Each year, mining companies use the equivalent of 58 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs to blast their way through the bedrock. Across Appalachia, a million acres of land and more than 470 entire mountains have already been destroyed; the resultant rubble has clogged more than 1,200 miles of mountain streams, and produced vast slurry pits laced with poisons including lead, arsenic and mercury.
Read more here.
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