The topic for this month’s green moms carnival is coal. Hosted by our dear Lisa Sharp of Retro housewife goes green.

I feel very inept about the issues surrounding coal. I thought to myself. What do I really know about coal? My parents used it in our fireplace to start a fire. It’s very black and very shiny. I see it piled into train cars all the time. I know that it’s mined, dangerously in that the work is hard, harmful to those who mine it, not only because of the nature of mining, but also for health reasons. My knowledge about mining comes from films like Coal Miners Daughter. What that actually means is, I know very little about coal mining. I don’t live it. I don’t lose a father or husband to black lung or experience the widespread health issues in relationship to coal.

The history of coal is actually fascinating. Coal was formed millions of years ago. It’s called fossil fuel because it was made from plants that were once alive. Fossil means really old. Like dinosaur old. The mining of Coal began in the 1800’s. There are two types of mining. Surface mining where surface dirt is scraped, coal is unearthed and that land is used again. The reusing of this land where they plant grasses and trees, is called reclamation. The other type of mining is the dangerous kind. Mine shafts are dug deep to where the coal is, sometimes 1000 feet deep. When the shafts are this deep it’s called deep mining. Our sources of coal are nonrenewable in that at some point, like another 90 years or so, we will completely run out of it. Interesting. After the coal is mined it is cleaned and shipped to market, transported like the trains I often see or on barges along our rivers. The coal market is to factories and power plants. Power plants burn coal to make electricity. Factories use coal to fuel production. Coal is one of our most important energy sources. 50% of our electricity is sourced from coal.

Coal is polluting when it is burned. Period. Factories and power plants work really hard to keep pollution from getting into the air. They clean it before it is burned and they scrub the polluted smoke before it goes into the air. We still have a lot of pollution from coal. Everyone knows this and it’s been going on a very long time. I hear about the technology clean coal all the time. Seems to me coal is just plain dirty. Saying that its clean is like wrapping organic vegetables in plastic. Stupid.

Near my community there is a huge wind farm. A seriously large, beautiful landscape of absolutely elegant alternative energy production. I have posted images here before of them. I am absolutely fascinated. As a consumer, I can’t choose wind energy versus my local coal fueled energy. I am not given that opportunity. The clean alternative energy is for someone else. It’s complicated. I don’t get it. It’s like baking chocolate chip cookies and saying you can’t have one.

I don’t have any wisdom about this one. I yearn for choice as I did years ago when I wanted to buy free range chickens and eggs. I’d like to think that a choice for me as a homeowner is near. I feel powerless re: the coal industry – it’s bigger than me, it makes a gazillion dollars and selfishly I want to be warm in the winter, and be able to work from home on my computer. I bet I am not alone in thinking a shift to the actual production of alternative energy only is mind boggling.

A bit like my wish for fast food restaraunts to be shut down.  Ain’t happening. I wish I could feel optimistic about this one. I don’t.

I do know this  — if I could put my current utility dollars to something more forward thinking I would.

photo by karen hanrahan june 2008 near mendota, il