You gotta love this whole Clean Coal bullshit hyped by the polluting powers that be and our new BFF, Obama hisself. Seriously, was there ever an oxymoron more obvious? Clean. Coal. Think about it, for a minute. It’s right up there with Safe Guns and Benign Cancer. It’s the environmental equivalent of waterboarding.
And now the unfortunate people of the already suckiest states in the nation get to sample the coal-y goodness themselves — 500 million gallons of it, poured right into their water supply and their DNA. But, as a commenter noted over at OpenLeft, that’s totally fine, because according to the spin meisters of the coal industry the waste products of clean coal would be honey and maple syrup, so all is well and good and we shouldn’t even think about changing the way we do things. All that remains now is for our ever-compliant FDA to decide that this stuff is actually a perfect nutritional fit for infants and allow it in baby formula…
Meanwhile, those of us crosswind from this epic fail will have to live with whatever fallout makes it our way. Now, Barack, do you want some unstable nuclear waste to go with that nasty black stuff, or are you ready for some real change we can believe in?
Update: right on cue:
“An Environmental Protection Agency spokeswoman has said some toxic metals could be in the muck, including mercury and arsenic, but EPA tests were not finished. Dead fish were seen floating downstream, but the TVA said that could have been caused by freezing temperatures that may have contributed to the dike bursting.”
Riight. I’m sure those fish just died of the cold. Vicious environmentalists, letting the little fishies freeze. So, what we really need is some more global warming to keep the water warm — I say we pour more fly ash in to the rivers of the Mid West — kinda like floating fleece for fish.
