Coal Export to China

Coal Trains to China

In response to the plans of the Coal industry to export coal from the Powder River Basin at Cherry Point Washington State, or any port anywhere.

I just read in this weeks Economist August 10th 2013, the lead story "The World's Worst Polluter" , which refers no longer to the USA but now to China. China now contributes 30% of the total to global CO2 pollution. And growing. The article refers to China now beginning to realize it needs to stop polluting as it is killing its own people off and poisoning its own land.

Now enter the Powder Basin Coal Export scheme and the willful and knowing decision to export coal that is too dirty to be allowed to be utilized for producing electricity in the United states. In other words the coal that would be exported is a defective unacceptable product in the USA, illegal to use here. The United States has decided that it does not want to pollute its own environment and poison its own lands and sicken and kill off its own people using this high sulfur content coal to produce electricity. The coal mining industry thinks that it would be a great idea to export this dirty coal to other countries for them to burn it and poison pollute the environment and sicken kill off people there.

This is absurd, and highly immoral. Given that CO2 is a pollution that enters the atmosphere and stays there for hundreds of years it does not matter if the coal is burned in China, India or America, the effect will be the same, increase and acceleration of global warming everywhere. Not to mention the local high intensity pollution and downwind plume fallout of the other toxic elements in the coal that will poison the lands, people and food production in China.

The export of this coal is exactly like a company that manufactures defective products or poisonous products that have been banned in the USA exporting those products to other countries where they will poison kill and injure others, with the amazing addition to this export of dangerous defective product that it also comes straight back and on us adding pollution to the air we breathe, increasing global warming, adding mercury and other toxins to the ocean waters we get food from and adding toxins to any food product exported from China.

Or think of it like selling your neighbor a bunch of lead paint and asbestos boards you had piled up in your basement to fix up their house.

Morally, ethically, good neighborliness, environmentally and just plain common sense self preservation says, NO. We do not export dirty coal anywhere ever, leave it in the ground.