We Can No Longer Ignore the Not-So-Hidden Financial
and Human Costs of Coal
Dexter Gauntlett
If, like me, you are anxious for the healthcare debate to be over so
Congress can get back to passing clean-energy legislation – think again.
Human health should, in fact, be a prime driver of meaningful
clean-energy legislation.
While it is true that we will be using some fossil fuels for the
foreseeable future – we must solidly rebuke requests for funding of any
new coal plants (with carbon capture and storage or otherwise), ‘clean
coal,’ and ‘coal-to-liquid’ fuels on financial and health grounds. From
mining to combustion, coal disproportionally affects the health of
low-income people and communities of color. Even if we were to get past
the technological and cost hurdles of new coal technologies – the coal
industry’s human cost remains unacceptable.
Michael Hendryx is Associate Professor in the Department of Community
Medicine at West Virginia University – the heart of coal country. His
research suggests that between 1997-2005 there were 10,000 ‘excess
deaths’ every year that were attributed to higher poverty rates in
mining areas of Appalachia and also to differences in environmental
exposures and pollution from the activities in the mining industry.
He used the term “America’s Sacrifice Zone” to describe how some people
in America’s coal mining communities view their own lives there. “…Some
people who live there view that their lives are valued less than people
who live somewhere else… that their lives are expendable so other people
somewhere else can have cheap electricity.”
Clearly, not all coal miners share this demoralizing view – but I
believe that if most Americans knew the true cost of coal – financial
and human – they would gladly do what it took to change the status quo –
including pay more for electricity.
Indeed, consumers and society are paying much more for fossil fuel than
the price you see at the pump or on your electric bill. A new study from
the non-partisan
National Research Council highlights just how much in hidden costs
we are already paying:
“Non-climate damages resulting from the use of coal in electricity
generation amounted to $62 billion in 2005, or 3.2 cents per
kilowatt-hour (kWh). These damages are twenty times higher per kWh than
damages from electricity generated by natural gas. More than 90 percent
of the damages are associated with premature human mortality.” (See
summary report here:
Hidden Costs of Energy - Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and
Use)
The Council considers this figure conservative because “hazardous
pollutants,” including lead and mercury, were not included. Nor were
“ecosystem damages, water pollution impacts, and the effects of energy
on national security” – categories that would include last year’s
Tennessee Valley Authority one billion gallon
coal
ash spill into the Tennessee River.
These costs have been known for a long time and politicians have been
passing the buck for decades. One particularly timely and little-known
example demonstrates the financial-human health connection that coal
presents – described in the excellent
report on energy subsidies from the Environmental Law Institute. In
1978, Congress created the Black Lung Disease Trust Fund (BLDTF) to pay
health benefits to coal miners that contracted pneumoconiosis (black
lung disease), funded through an excise tax of $1.10/ton on underground
coal and $.55/ton on surface coal. The fund quickly had difficulty
keeping up with payments and was given “indefinite authority to borrow”
from the General Fund (i.e. tax dollars). By the end of Fiscal Year
2008, the fund owed $13 billion in principal debt and accrued interest
to the Treasury. That’s 26 times as much funding that was approved for
the Green Jobs Act, passed as part of the 2009 American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act – which will train workers for new jobs in the
clean-tech economy.
With so much evidence and clarity available on the subject of coal’s
disproportionately high contribution to global warming and negative
impact on human health, the traditional false choices proffered by the
fossil fuel industry and their lobbyists are falling apart at the seams.
Anyone who opposes meaningful reductions at coal plants, supports more
funding for new coal plants, coal-to-liquid fuels, ‘clean-coal,’ or
repeats the same tired arguments – that ‘coal is not going anywhere
anytime soon since it provides over 50% of U.S. electricity’ and a rapid
transition from which would ‘cause major damage to the economy’ – either
does not understand the size of the clean-tech opportunity to improve
lives and livelihoods for millions of Americans or is being
disingenuous.
The fact that coal’s hidden costs have been well documented but
routinely ignored for political and economic practicality – is nothing
new. But in this day and age there should be no safe haven for flat-
earth-climate-denying-coal-money-receiving politicians, companies, and
lobbyists. We have already seen their impact on the watered down
American Clean Energy Security Act (ACES). And now it’s becoming
increasingly apparent that
no significant international climate deal will be reached before
Copenhagen.
Assuming elected representatives such as Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia)
are being genuine in their objections to ACES on behalf of the
communities that would have the most ‘to lose’ by incurring meaningful
limits on carbon – then the real problem is these representatives’ lack
of creativity. States and cities in other parts of the country are
packing their community colleges with as many people as possible in
order to retrain workers with skills for the 21st Century. There is no
reason that states like West Virginia, Wyoming, Kentucky and other major
coal states cannot do the same. Indeed many groups within these regions
such as Southern
Alliance for Clean Energy and
Coal River Wind
are trying to provide an alternative path - but state and federal
leadership is sorely needed.
The best way to boil it down is to ask members of Congress and coal
lobbyists – “Would you encourage your own child to work in a coal mine
or live in a highly polluted community if there were other options
available?”
------------
Dexter Gauntlett is a senior research and marketing associate at
Clean Edge, Inc.,
and board member at
Green
Empowerment. Email him at
gauntlett@cleanedge.com (Twitter
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