[Dialogue] This was an eye-opener!

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My  Favorite Green Lump 
 
 
 
    *   By _THOMAS L.  FRIEDMAN_ 
(http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/thomaslfriedman/index.html?inline=nyt-per) 



NYTimes  Published: January 10, 2007
 
All environmentalists have their favorite “green” energy source that they  
think will break our addiction to oil and slow down climate change. I’ve come  
out to Montana to see mine. It’s called coal.  
Yes, yes, I know, you thought I was going to say corn ethanol or switch grass 
 or soybean diesel. Well, one day they all might reach a scale that can get 
us  off oil. But the cheap, available fuel that China, India and America all 
have in  abundance today — and are all going to burn for the next decade — is 
coal. So  unless we can burn coal in a cleaner way, you can kiss the climate 
goodbye —  we’ll all be wearing bikinis and shorts in Manhattan in January. 
When it comes to what it will take to “green” coal, there’s no more informed 
 or intrepid tour guide than Montana’s Democratic governor, Brian Schweitzer. 
The  governor, a bulldozer of a man, met me in Billings in his little prop 
plane, we  flew into a winter gale that tossed us around like salad pieces, and 
then we set  down on a makeshift runway in Colstrip, on the edge of a coal 
strip mine. On the  way back, after flying through another howling storm that 
caused me to dig my  nails so deeply into the armrests I left my fingerprints in 
the leather, I  thanked the pilots profusely. The governor simply bellowed, “I’
m glad we had our  best interns flying today!”  
When it comes to cleaning up coal, though, Governor Schweitzer is dead  
serious. 
“Here in Montana we make our living outside,” said the governor, an  
agronomist who got his start building farms in Saudi Arabia, “and when you do  that, 
you know the climate is changing. We don’t get as much snow in the high  
country as we used to ... and the runoff starts sooner in the spring. ... The  
river I’ve been fishing over the last 50 years is now warmer in July by five  
degrees than 50 years ago, and it is hard on our trout population. ... So when  
Exxon Mobil hires someone who calls himself a ‘scientist’ to claim this is not  
true, you don’t have to get The New York Times to know the guy is blowing  
smoke.” 
But here’s what the governor also knows: Montana has one-third of all the  
coal deposits in America — 8 percent of all the coal in the world. Montana’s  
coal is roughly equivalent to 240 billion barrels of oil. “That’s enough to  
replace all our imported oil for 60 years,” he noted. 
That’s the good news. The bad news is that because of global warming — 
fueled  in part by carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning electricity plants — 
the  only way we’ll be able to use all those coal reserves is if we can burn 
coal  without emitting the CO2. Otherwise we’re cooked, literally. 
So Governor Schweitzer’s crusade is to get the coal-burning industries to  
take the lead on this, in partnership with government. The governor recalled a  
recent conference of coal-dependent industries, held in Phoenix, at which he  
held up a lump of coal and warned: “You are the people who represent the  
companies who will decide whether I’m holding up the future of energy or the  
past. Take a look at all the other people sitting at your table. You know who  you 
see? You see the last remaining people on the planet who don’t believe CO2  
is a problem. ... The only way you will make this the energy of the future is 
to  recognize C02 as a problem and that you have to be part of the solution.” 
And by  the way, he added, “there is a lot of money in it for you guys. You can 
sell  this technology all over the world.” 
Governor Schweitzer has a plan for Washington: 1) Set a floor price for crude 
 oil in the U.S. at $40 a barrel forever. That  will tell Wall Street that if 
it invests in new, clean coal technologies — which  can be run profitably at 
the equivalent of $40 a barrel — OPEC will never  undercut them. 2) Set up a 
European-style cap and trade system rewarding  companies that buy clean coal 
technologies and punishing those that don’t. 3)  Have Washington co-invest in a 
dozen pilot gasification and liquefaction  technologies — which already exist —
 for cleaning coal and sequestering the  carbon dioxide. Then we’ll identify 
the best technologies quicker and move down  the innovation curve. 4) Write 
the regulations now for how we will manage carbon  dioxide that is removed from 
coal and stored underground. 
As we talked, four smokestacks from the coal-fired electricity plant in  
Colstrip, which helps power Portland and Seattle, were belching CO2. 
“For the last 100 years we built plants like this one,” the governor said.  “
It takes crushed coal, ignites it to heat water that produces steam, and that 
 turns a turbine and produces electricity. ... You build that smoke stack 
real  high so that nasty stuff goes to someone else’s backyard. Well, we’ve run 
out of  backyards.” 

 
Cynthia N.  Vance
Strategics International Inc.
8245 SW 116 Terrace
Miami, Florida,  33156
305-378-1327; fax 305-378-9178
_http://members.aol.com/facilitationfla_ 
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