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NOW on PBS -- April 9th, 2009

Cleaning Coal
Overview

Blueprint America — with NOW on PBS — looks at if America’s most affordable and abundant energy resource — coal — can be produced without an adverse effect to the environment.

Still, the country is dependent on coal – it supplies half of America’s electricity. At the same time, there is a price — coal may be cheap, but the environmental cost is high.

With carbon emissions caps on the Obama Administration’s agenda, coal is at the center of the energy debate. NOW’s Senior Correspondent Maria Hinojosa goes to Wyoming to report on the state’s coal industry, and its assertion that it can produce “clean coal” — coal that can be burned without releasing carbon into the atmosphere.

President Obama has been outspoken in his support for “clean coal” technology, but others argue the concept is simply a public relations campaign instead of an energy solution.

As part of the report, Hinojosa talks with Dave Freudenthal, the Governor of Wyoming, and Jeff Goodell, the author of “Big Coal,” who says that carbon dioxide emissions generated from coal contribute to global warming.

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Comments

3 comments

#1

It hasn’t been necessary to consume fuel to generate electricity since about 1890.

Why we produce electricity the way we do is explained in depth and clearly here: http://peswiki.com/index.php/Site:LRP:The_Deliberate_Curtailment_of_Nikola_Tesla’s_Primary_Energy_Source.

No discussion of this kind is complete without this facet of it. I knew this story when I was nine years old. Are you less curious than I was at nine? Do you have the courage to tell this story in public, doing the greatest service to mankind, knowing it could cost you your life?

It’s the biggest issue before us.

#2

I just watched your show on NOW. I really don’t believe that coal production in Wyoming is a dirty little secret. It’s pretty obvious to anybody that drives through the Powder River Basin or does any research on it at all. Wyoming is more than just Yellowstone and the Powder River Basin.

#3

By the way there is a weathering prosses called carbonation that explains how to scrub co2 .Nature scrubs the air on its on but we just pump so much co2 in to the air the rain can’t scrub it fast enough.

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Major Support for Blueprint America is provided by the Rockefeller Foundation.