Today, the Senate Finance Committee released its version of the Health Care Reform package.  Now our national leaders have something to negotiate that should lead to a final bill.

Remember the Cap and Trade Legislation that cleared the House earlier this year?  Right, neither does anyone else.

It seems likely that the time between now and Thanksgiving will be taken up with getting health care done, but then we have to immediately move on to protecting the climate.

Luckily, the Obama lead government is taking steps in the right direction even while the legislative push is focused on health care.  The EPA issued new mileage standards for the auto industry today, and the incentives for energy efficiency in the government stimulus plan are being spent at a faster and faster clip.

Speaking of faster and faster, are we all ready to lobby and show our commitment to climate change legislation when our turn comes?  We better be, or the forces of the status quo (read big coal and big oil) will get the upper hand.  Their powder has been kept dry during the summer, but it is ready to burn at a moments notice.

It is going to take the people, business and government working together to make the changes necessary to achieve endependence, energy independence that ends dependence on polluting fuels.

On your mark, get set, ……….

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