It was only a matter of time.  From the moment President Obama announced that he was putting stimulus funds into solar power and other green energy sources we all knew it was coming.  Now it has.

The coal industry has its greedy paws out in an attempt to claim part of the funds that President Obama seeks to spend on renewable energy.  Big surprise!

I wonder what sort of mental giants are working overtime for the coal industry.  Whether they are ignorant or just stupid is for you to decide, but it is apparent that they cannot grasp either the concept of green energy or exactly what a renewable resource is.

Well here is a newsflash for you coal guys,  renewable energy means we are not depleting the limited resources of our world!  Duh!  F.Y.I. there is only so much coal, natural gas and oil to be had.  Just like diamonds or gold there is no more being produced.  That means coal is a limited resource, plain and simple.  I am left wondering exactly what part of this concept is beyond your mental capacity.

If you want to put coal to good use, then use it for something beneficial to mankind.  Save what we have left for good old fashioned B.B.Q.’s!  If we can avoid global warming and our race has a future I would be proud to hand down the simple family B.B.Q. as a tradition and way of life for mankind.  Think of what you can preserve by that simple act.  Your name may go down alongside that of Alexander the Great or George Washington as the man who saved B.B.Q. for a hundred generations.

Once we spend hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars on building all these coal burning power plants and hundreds of billions more retooling our infrastructure and industrial capacity to run off those plants,  what then?  What do we do when your limited resource becomes more limited?  Are we to pay you more for our power as you struggle to go deeper into the earth to find coal just as we pay more at the gas pump now for harder to find oil?

What do we do when the coal runs out?  How do we power our nation then?  After you have made your billions of dollars, died and are nothing but a skeleton in an old grave where do we turn then?   After you and your kin have their fortune and you have done more harm to the environment, then would you have us turn to solar and wind power?

If you search right now on Yahoo under “clean coal” the top two hits you get will be GEreports.com and Greenbankenergy.com.  (links to clean coal advocates not activated on this site)

The first thing you will notice is the big picture of a nuclear power plant at the top of the page at Green Bank.  Though that may be a big selling point for clean-coal it does not instill great confidence in those of us who believe in green energy.    The rest of the site seems to be geared toward selling the parts they make for power plants.

At GE Reports (gee wonder who pay the bills at this site?) in the very first paragraph you will see them brag about building a new coal power plant in California.  They boast how this new plant will have: “much lower emissions than more controversial coal plants”.

Well, I do not know about you, but I am ever so happy they have lower emissions.  I am so happy I want to live next door to one of there low emission coal stacks….. NOT!

Lesson number two for you big brains at the coal industry is what exactly ‘Green’ energy means.

You see green power like solar and wind produces NO emissions.  None.  Zip.  Nada.  You do not seem to realize that lower emissions are still bad emissions.  The difference between less emissions of toxic fumes and the “more controversial” emissions of toxic fumes is just how fast they kill you.

If a power plant was put in next to your home, the school your children attend and near the source of the water you drink what would you choose.  (note my numbers here are totally made up)Your first choice is a “controversial” plant that could harm your lungs in as little as a year and kill you in five.  Your second choice is a ‘clean coal’ plant with its lower emissions that will harm your lungs in three years and kill you in twelve.  Your third choice is a solar farm that will in no way harm you or your children….ever.  Now think real hard you coal industry folks.. what type of power plant do you want built near your home?

Of course, there are  factors to consider other than the health of the people near the power plant.  All power plants need fuel to run them and produce waste products that need to be dealt with.  Often these considerations have more impact on the environment than the plants themselves.  When it comes to coal burning power plants this environmental impact begins the second you start to dig for the coal.

The pictures that the clean coal guys show you of their power plants never include the mining process.  Little things like mountain top mining where they blast off the top of a mountain to get at the coal.  After eradication of that little part of Gods green earth they push all the waste product from the mine over the edge of  the mountain clogging and polluting  streams thus killing off more plants and wildlife.  You never hear them speak of the cancer that miners die from or the cave ins that claim still more lives.

Solar and wind plants require no mining.  No mountain top blasting.  They pollute no rivers and kill no wildlife.  They cause no cancer and no disease.  They produce no toxic fumes (lower or controversial) or harmful waste products.  They draw their power from a source that will be here until the world ends.  There is no limit to the energy we can make from them.  Once we build the plants and adjust our power grid to accommodate them, we and the generations that follow us will have unlimited cheap renewable energy along with cleaner air and water.

My friends, that is the definition of a green power source.

So once again I must ask you to contact your representatives and let them know what you think.

The stimulus funds are there to create jobs.  Giving money to the coal industry may create jobs but, they are not forward looking jobs for either our nation or our people.  The problems created by coal burning plants do not begin or end with the soot filled smoke spewing from their stacks.  The cost of cleaning up the long term impact that these plants will have far outweighs any short term benefits we may see from cheap electricity or short term jobs.

We are faced with rebuilding our nation to make it stronger and better than it has been.  To do that we need to invest wisely and for the long term.  To insure our long term prosperity, we the people, not the corporations, must take an active part in what is being done in our name.  To guarantee our independence, we must learn from the lessons of the past and look ahead to avoid yet another crisis in years to come from another fossil fuel that is becoming harder to find.

We must choose as a people how are going to go into the next chapter of our nations history.  Will it be with a truly clean and unlimited power source that insures the health of our people and environment or will we replace one fossil fuel addiction with another?

Robert F. Kennedy Junior is an advocate for clean energy and an avid environmentalist.  Listen as he speaks in the middle of Charleston, West Virginia about mountaintop removal for coal mining.  This rally was held last weekend.  The noise you hear is a fleet of coal trucks that drove in and circled his location and began blaring their horns non-stop in a effort to drown him out.  In W Va they get away with that sort of thing without so much as a traffic ticket.