Clean carbon and oscillating states

How many of you remember seeing Barak Obama or John McCain on the campaign trail talking about clean coal technology? Did you notice how this happened in the swing states, states like Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio and others? Now consider this, there are no clean coal plants in operation in the United States, clean coal advocates can’t tell you how much it will cost to produce power using this technology. This technology may not even be viable, but both presidential candidates were talking about how important it is… why is that?

The economies of these states are tied to the coal industry in many ways, many of the citizens and politicians in those states will fight for coal as if their lives depend on it… this is because their economic lives depend on it! Unfortunately for us, the general public and the rest of the world, these states control who gets elected president and they know it. Somehow we can understand his egoism, not wanting to give up power. In other ways, we mean… you dirty bastards, how dare you do this to the rest of us! The coal industry and the states that serve it hold our nation hostage, our current two-party political system allows it. Our children will have to foot the bill in more ways than one…it is time for us to stand up and be heard.

So this is the situation; Energy use in the United States and the rest of the world is growing rapidly, the number one method of producing energy is coal, approximately 50% in the United States and 70% in China. In the next 5 to 10 years, hybrid electric vehicles will become much more prevalent. This will create even more demands for electricity. We’re investing hundreds of millions of dollars in coal-fired power plants, a technology that sees price increases of about 5-7% per year on the dirtiest method of producing power we have. On the other hand, we have alternative energy, energy that drastically decreases in cost over time, both through the reduction of manufacturing costs with mass production and production costs because the maintenance of the equipment is very low and the power supply… sunlight, wind and geothermal are free.

The question is this… Do we want to be a nation that leads the next great world revolution, the Alternative Energy Revolution? Do we want to sell our technology to the rest of the world, especially Third World countries, as they start to use more energy? Or… do we want to continue to pay off our children with debts for old technology, technology that is obsolete as we speak? Would you like to be the nation responsible for continuing to pollute the world? Who are the ones we’ve been waiting for? We are!