Frequent viewers of the network news stations may have become aware of the recent "I'm an Energy Voter" ads that have started popping up in support of domestic coal energy. The ads capitalize on public discontent with large petroleum companies, then dangle coal power in front of the viewer as a sort of magical fix to all of America's energy concerns. By using the attention grabber of "Coal: America's Power," and by saying increasing coal production will "create jobs," the commercials brush over environmental and health concerns, acting as though coal production would bring nothing but good to everyone. This is simply not the case.
Coal is an extremely dirty source of energy, and is the exact opposite of the sort of energy we should be pursuing. For example, in 2006, coal accounted for 49% of US energy production, but was responsible for 83% of CO2 emissions by energy production, meaning the ecological impact of coal is many times greater than other sources of power. Less than half of domestic energy production accounted for over four fifths of CO2 emissions, yet large energy companies are pushing for increased coal production. If coal production accounted for an even greater share of domestic energy production, the environmental impact would be vast, and irreversible. It isn't only in carbon emissions that coal falls short of safety expectations, it also puts out dangerous quantities of sulfur dioxide and mercury, both of which are extremely hazardous to our health and the well-being of ecosystems near to the plants. This is not just a climate change issue - coal is one of the largest culprits of smog creation, primarily composed of poisonous sulfur oxide and nitrous oxides. There is nothing that effects everyone so broadly as air quality, and nothing that is more important to protect.
Around the same time that I began noticing the coal advertisements, I also started hearing more and more about the benefits of natural gas. Large companies, like Shell, are touting their natural gas interests because it has "50% fewer emissions than coal," and represents a clean and sustainable source of power for years to come. While natural gas is certainly a better energy choice than coal, one method of extraction which has gained a lot of attention in the news lately, hydraulic fracking, is environmentally devastating. Fracking is the process of shooting large quantities of high-pressure water into the ground in order to unearth natural gas supplies that are otherwise unreachable. There are widespread concerns of atmospheric and groundwater contamination, with residents reporting undrinkable or flammable water near most large fracking sites. The natural gas industry denies these claims, arguing that there has not been any direct causal relation between the actual fracking process and groundwater contamination. But that is precisely where the industry's verbal sleight of hand may go unnoticed. They claim that the actual fracking process, or the injection of the water into the soil, has not yet been linked to environmental damage, and the science is still unclear on the matter. There are, however, many associated processes that go along with fracking, such as construction, operation, flowback (when the fracking fluid and natural gas comes flowing back out of the earth), and frequent blowouts in the distribution pipes, all of which have been linked to severe environmental damage by independent researchers. The most recent study (2012) commissioned by the EPA initially held that fracking was a dangerous process, before industry lobbying caused the EPA to narrow their scope to the water injection process. This is dishonest, and unfair. Residents of counties near hydraulic fracking operations have reported undrinkable, sometimes even flammable, water, and the ecological impacts will only become known in the years to come. The hydraulic fracking process also releases dangerous methane gasses, carbon dioxide, and other hydrocarbons into the atmosphere. Methane, the primary component of natural gas, is 20 times as harmful as CO2 in trapping atmospheric heat. The fracking process has been shown to release from 4-8% of the extracted methane into the atmosphere, which would have a devastating impact on global climate change. What is more disturbing about the whole affair is that court documents related to the fracking suits are sealed after the suits are resolved. Taking the evidence as a whole, there is more than reasonable suspicion that the gas industry is aware of enivonmental effects of fracking, yet is suppressing this information in the name of profit. In light of similar scandals in other corporate-dominated industries (BP underreporting scope of Deepwater Horizon leaks, LIBOR scandals in London, Big Pharm suppression of life-saving drugs), I believe that the natural gas industry is wilfully ignoring the health of residents so they can reap even greater profits.
Beyond the environmental impacts, pursuing greater coal and natural gas production will not serve the interests of the American people. New technologies allow further distribution of natural gas by liquifying it, then shipping it around the world. The market for natural gas abroad is very profitable, with prices per ton sometimes 4 or 5 times as high as they are domestically. The largest and most profitable market is in Asia. If energy industry lobbyists get their way, all that will happen is a great increase in energy exports, a fattening of industry executives' pocketbooks, and ecological havoc across this great nation. Similarly with the Keystone XL pipeline. Even if you don't believe in global warming, (although nearly every credible scientist does) the Keystone pipeline won't do you a lick of good, and likely will do a lot of bad. Everyone should have the right to clean air and water. Nothing should be supreme to that right, not even electricity production, and especially not profit. The answer to America's energy problems is not more of the same, but a complete and total green revolution. But that deserves a post in its own right, so I guess I'll just leave it at that.
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