We know, it’s a heavy burden, but it’s your job to make clean coal for the foreseeable future.

Here are the facts.  There is no such thing as clean coal, and there won’t be such a thing for a long time.

The coal industry is running ads showing President Obama, as candidate Obama, saying that “if America can put a man on the moon, don’t tell me we can’t burn coal without releasing carbon dioxide.”  Maybe that’s true, but we aren’t doing it yet, and the moon mission took a decade.

Fifty percent or so of the electricity we use in the United States comes from coal.  In the middle of the country, almost all of the electricity comes from coal.  The coal state senators are going to be hard to budge on cap and trade legislation, and whatever passes congress this year will be a baby step toward curbing carbon dioxide  (a teeny tiny step in the right direction).

But you can start making coal cleaner right now.

How, you ask?  By not wasting electricity.  All the electricity you don’t waste is electricity that doesn’t have to be generated by coal.

Here is the logic.  There is no storage system on the electricity grid (some argue that hydroelectric dams and their reservoirs are grid storage, but very little of our electricity comes from hydro).

When we turn on a switch to use electricity, for all intents and purposes, the power providers have to make that electricity right then.  They can’t make some today and save it for you to use tomorrow or next week.  A majority of the time, power companies are burning coal to make that electricity.

So when you don’t waste electricity, you keep the power providers from burning coal that had no real use.  Where can you find wasted electricity: in your unattended power, phantom power, vampire power, call it what you will.  Also in the rooms with lights on when nobody is there, or the TVs or game systems or computers running when nobody is watching or playing.

Look around your house to see where the only form of current clean coal is hiding.

Here are some videos about unattended power:

Simple things you can do to save energy around the home

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-15.html

End phantom power drain-cartoon

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-44.html

An Introduction to GreenSwitch with Ed Begley, Jr.

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-6-v-24.html

Start with the stipulation that the Cap and Trade policy being proposed for the President’s new budget is a politically expedient half-step.  The reality is that we need a carbon tax, but that won’t fly in Washington, so we’ll start with Cap and Trade.

Here is a video about how carbon dioxide is effecting the environment:

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-13-v-82.html

Here is a video about a unique solution, nuclear explosivity:

http://endependence.info/research/videos-c-13-v-45.html

Now to the objections as voiced by the defenders of the status quo:

Cap and Trade is a burden on the economy, a hidden tax that will burden us all, blah, blah, blah.

I found out that when I sit in one place for hours blogging, my butt starts to hurt.  So every once in a while, I stand up, stretch, walk around, something to avoid the pain.

Is there some reasonable argument that a business will react differently?  If a company finds out that wasting energy is costing it more money, to the point where the cost becomes painful, won’t that company change its behavior?

Estimates are that we waste 30% of the energy we use in the U.S.  All experts agree that energy conservation is the cheapest form of energy policy reform, and the least painful way to achieve energy independence that ends dependence on polluting fuel.  But only some businesses stop wasting energy voluntarily.

A cap and trade policy would make wasting energy a real pain in the butt, and my bet is that almost every business will change its behavior to avoid the pain.