Meanwhile, back at the stimulus

[randy_byers]

Interesting rah-rah piece at time.com about some of the ambitions behind the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (a.k.a. the stimulus) and how things are going.

Snippet:

'For starters, the Recovery Act is the most ambitious energy legislation in history, converting the Energy Department into the world's largest venture-capital fund. It's pouring $90 billion into clean energy, including unprecedented investments in a smart grid; energy efficiency; electric cars; renewable power from the sun, wind and earth; cleaner coal; advanced biofuels; and factories to manufacture green stuff in the U.S. The act will also triple the number of smart electric meters in our homes, quadruple the number of hybrids in the federal auto fleet and finance far-out energy research through a new government incubator modeled after the Pentagon agency that fathered the Internet.'

Comments

[del-c.livejournal.com]

cleaner coal

It makes me uncomfortable how so many things that aren't the same get lumped under the category "green". I come from a city of eight million people who used to burn dirty coal, and I wouldn't want to go back to those days, but that's a local environment thing. When it comes to the global environment, coal is coal is coal: it's carbon taken out from under the ground and burned in the air, when it ought to be left in the ground.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I basically agree with this, but I'm resigned to the fact that there are economic reasons that keep the idea alive. Who knows, maybe something good will come out of research into carbon sequestration, if only as a byproduct or tangent.

[wrdnrd]

That is exactly the phrase that jumped out at me from the article, too. "Oh, we're calling it 'cleaner coal' now, are we? Instead of 'CLEAN coal'??" Because i can't imagine anyone who's ever come in contact with coal in any way -- mining it, burning it -- would describe a single thing about the process as "clean."

I grew up right near one of Pennsylvania's coal mining regions, and i find it terrifying that anyone still thinks burning and mining coal is a good idea. I have furniture from my grandparents house that i'm pretty sure STILL has coal dust in it.