Stopping coal

This comes as no surprise. According to this story in the Los Angeles Times, every time a utility wants to build a new coal-fired power plant, the Sierra Club tries to stop it on whatever grounds are available -- environmental, zoing, you name it. The idea is to stop the construction of any new coal-fired plants in the name of stopping global warming.

I can see why you would want fewer coal-fired plants, but not because of global warming. There are good reasons to not want so much pollution dumped into the air or, in the case of stuff that's scrubbed from the stacks before it can get into the air, the soil.

The problem is what we replace coal with.

I also like these last two paragraphs in the article:

Members of the environmental law brigade concede that stopping new plants may not be as effective in reducing emissions as getting the oldest, dirtiest, least efficient coal plants offline. Coal supplies half of America's electricity.

"We'll need to find a way to go after them, too," Persampieri said.

As far as I know, utilities are spending billions making their old plants cleaner. The newer plants would be cleaner still. Or less dirty, depending on how you look at it.

UPDATE: Here is part of an AP story that applies to this item.

CONESVILLE, Ohio (AP) — The state has approved two landfills and is considering another four to bury millions of tons of ash and sludge produced at coal-fired power plants.

When Ohio’s coal-based power plants updated their environmental safeguards to comply with federal rules, they reduced pollution coming from smokestacks. But they also kept more pollution on the ground so, instead of billowing into the air, more of the waster is carted away from the plants in dump trucks.

“It’s obviously another problem with coal,” said Sandy Buchanan, director of Ohio Citizen Action and critic of American Electric Power’s plans for a new coal plant in Meigs County in southeast Ohio.

“You end up with all this ash and sludge with coal that you don’t have with other kinds of power.” ...

“It’s part of the whole process. You have the scrubber on one end and a landfill on the other,” said Mark Durbin, a FirstEnergy spokesman. ...

A 2005 rule from the U.S. EPA required a 57 percent cut in sulfur dioxide emissions and a 61 percent cut in nitrogen oxide emissions by 2015. The aim is to reduce the amount of smog, acid rain and soot tied to power production.

An Ohio EPA official said dumping the waste in landfills is better than putting into the skies.