While the rising price of oil is quickly reflected in the dollars flowing into your gas tank, there's another energy source that's going up even faster than oil.  In fact, the price has gone is up 100% in less than a year.

Benchmark prices for some grades of electricity-generating steam coal are more than $100 for a metric ton, double September’s price. Metallurgical coal, the type used in steel making, has tripled in some contracts.

Only a year ago, it was eye-opening to see met coal contracts coming in above $100, but to see steam coal at this rate is astounding.  Little wonder that investors are ecstatic about the coal industry.

Year to date, shares of Arch Coal Inc. are up 41%. The biggie of the industry, Peabody Energy Corp., has waxed 24% -- and 94% from its August trough. ... Kohler rates Massey Energy Co. a buy for its concentration in metallurgical coal, the sweet spot of the market.

You may remember Massey Energy from the number of mine deaths, from their toxic flood 25x the size of the Exxon Valdez disaster, and for having the CEO take a supreme court judge on vacation to the Rivera while his company was waiting for a decision on a $76 million judgment.  Regardless, as far as the investment community is concerned, Massey is a "buy."

Nothing like that disconnect between dollars and damage.

But while the cost to the consumer hasn't been as obvious as the cost of oil, sooner or later (probably sooner) that cost is going to show up in your electric bill.  And, like oil, it'll show up in the cost of everything manufactured using electricity, which is... pretty much everything.  

And of course, when it comes to coal, the cost isn't all in the bill.  

What we are paying up for is the dirtiest fossil fuel in the ground, infamous for wielding a heavy hand in the planet’s warming. In Beijing they wear surgical masks to ward off the soot from coal-fired plants, which then drifts across the Pacific to further foul the air over Los Angeles. That’s not all. Black lung disease, mercury and sulfur emissions and the ravaging of Appalachian mountaintops are part of the legacy that keeps our lights on.

The only good thing about prices this high is that it should help to encourage the rapid expansion of solar and wind.

The 2008 winner of the $100,000 Buckminster Fuller Challenge is John Todd with his Comprehensive Design for a Carbon Neutral World, a blueprint for a post coal era and carbon neutral economy in the coal land regions of Appalachia.

The plan includes
detoxifying the trillions of gallons of coal slurry with eco-machines designed to render the material harmless to the environment and local populations as well as to create beneficial products from the treated slurry solids

and
replacing Appalachian coal with renewable resources like Appalachian wind and woody biomass for power and products in a regional agro-forestry ecological land management system that includes all the various sectors of society.

The plan is replicable and scalable, designed to  be carbon neutral if not carbon (and methane) clearing through the use of basic ecological design principles.

John Todd was one of the founders of New Alchemy Institute and has been building eco machines and living structures for forty years.

Let us face facts: Coal kills. Simple, straightforward, clear.

Coal has been a mainstay of the industrial economy for more than a century and provides a large share of the world's electricity. That electricity, that contribution to the industrial economy has brought about some tremendous things. But, for the 21st century and beyond, coal is no longer the necessity it once was, other options exist. And, we now know far more about the costs of burning coal than before: acid rain, mining destruction, health impacts, mercurty pollution, and that pesky little thing called Global Warming. Coal has had its day (actually decades), but that day has past as we now know with every growing clarity: COAL KILLS.

Recent news provides another way that Coal Kills: a Republican politician's slavish devotion to the promotion of polluting coal electricity looks to have killed his career.

From the Wonk Room.

As primaries are held today in the coal-rich but job-poor states of Kentucky and West Virginia, CNN -- whose presidential debates have been sponsored by the coal industry front group ACCCE -- is spending significant air time promoting coal-industry spin. The Wonk Room has previously highlighted CNN senior business correspondent Ali Velshi's exploitative promotion of coal-to-liquids technology. Today, Velshi brought the rest of the CNN team into his coal-propaganda orbit.

I posted this comment in another forum.   It's a pointed response, directed at someone who said environmentalists were a bunch of whiners who stood in the way of energy progress (ANWR).

When I was finished with it, I realized that it might make a good diary, because it has some good arguments that I haven't heard in the debate.

Back when I was supporting Edwards, one of my major concerns with Obama was in his support for "clean coal."  I wrote about it at the time, over at Green Mountain Daily.  Here's what I wrote:

There's a great diary over at MyDD which outlines some serious problems with an energy bill which is cosponsored by Obama.  The first is a bill to support liquid coal.  From the diary:

We don't know how to sequester mass quantities of carbon dioxide created during coal liquefaction yet. Even once we figure that process out--a solution that will no doubt reduce the net energy output of the coal to fuel process itself--we've still got a dirty fuel that increases greenhouse emissions compared to petroleum.

There's also a draft bill up for discussion that includes a provision which will screw us, as Vermonters, over, along with a lot of other states. 

Following recent investigative articles by the New York Times and the Washington Post  which detail two separate instances in which Sen. McCain apparently used his influence to bring about federal land deals lucrative for his friends and campaign contributors, another such case is about to come to the forefront.

This new land swindle is far less benign than the other two.  It involves wealthy corporate mining interests, electric utilities, and a Coal slurry pipeline through the homeland of Native Americans, which took not only their land but their precious water along the way as well.

In this case, Sen. McCain's influence did more than just bring profits to campagin contributors, it dispossessed thousands of indigenous people from lands they had occupied since before Columbus, not in the 19th Century, but in the 21st.  A story similar to that of many tribes sold out and taken advantage of by ruthless politicians, this wasnt the work of some banana republic dictator, but of the Republican candidate for President of the United States.

We've started a new video series here at the Rainforest Action Network: The Greenwash of the Week. Since coal and mountaintop removal have been popular issue around here I thought I'd share our latest video with you.

The topic this week is "clean" coal and in particular, a technology called "carbon capture and storage." Greenpeace just released a report about it called "False Hope" and we've been blogging about CCS this week on The Understory. I thought this also might be a good way to open up a conversation about what I see as one of Obama's biggest shortcomings. Check out the video and let me know what you think:

Asthma has been on my mind lately, because a child in my extended family was recently diagnosed with it after going to the hospital for respiratory problems. The chronic disease is one of the leading causes of hospitalization in children.

In addition, at least 20 million American adults are estimated to have asthma.

Yesterday was World Asthma Day, in connection with Asthma Awareness Month.

Join me after the jump to read about five policies our society should implement, as well as five steps individuals can take, to reduce the incidence and severity of asthma in our households and across the country.

The face of the new politics has deep ties to America's oldest fuel source.  Many in the energy business are now beginning to recognize that their best hope for 1600 Pennsylvania lies in Barack Obama.

I want to first thank gmoke  for an amazing diary, it inspired me to finally write my first.I also want to agree with him that energy independence at an individual level is achievable and preferable in places like the Midwest where wind or solar are readily available, relatively cost effective, and where extending grids to individual households over the vast distances is just using up valuable resources. However, as he and other posters note, human demographics simply do NOT operate in that way.  Energy independence is a misleading farce, and read my diary to see more about why.

From Gristmill:

It has not been a good year so far for King Coal, Big Oil, and whatever nickname we give to the nuclear energy industry.

It appears we are nearing the end for coal, oil and nuclear energy.

Al Gore:

Mountaintop removal is a crime and ought to be treated as a crime

Al Gore recently addressed Appalachian resident Ed Wiley, Ed's granddaughter Kayla, and the audience at the 2008 Nashville film festival, to present Director Michael O' Connell the 2008 "Reel Current Award" for his most recent piece "Mountain Top Removal."

You'll remember Ed Wiley as the  grandfather who walked 455 miles from Charleston WV to Washington DC to speak with Senator Byrd about mountaintop removal mining in his community, and Marsh Fork Elementary School which sits right below a sludge impoundment holding 2.8 billion gallons of toxic sludge.

The Coal Industry came a callin' in one of my diaries exposing their activities, complaining that I had not adequately examined their "principles" in commenting on the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity's (ACCCE's) new advertising campaign that bears an unnerving similarity to wording from Senator Obama's Presidential campaign and from Al Gore's Wecampaign.  Their comment (complaint):

By concentrating on the name change, as you do, you glossed over the REAL news about the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity:

For the first time, we have over 40 coal-related companies agreeing to federal regulation of carbon dioxide, provided our 12 principles are met.

Is this "REAL news" or is that "provided" an opening for a subordinate clause that is dominant?

Let's take a look.

Dominion Virginia Power is at it again. It ran a full-page page ad in the Washington Post yesterday, apparently forgetting all about a key ruling in March by the State Corporation Commission (SCC), the agency that oversees utilities.

Take a look at Dominion’s first bullet point describing how it plans to provide new electrical generation to Virginia:

[Among the important parts of this plan are:] A new clean-coal, carbon capture-compatible power station in Wise County where we’ll spend nearly $320 million to install the very latest in emissions-control systems. It’ll be one of the cleanest coal-powered stations in the U.S. and bring more than 1,200 jobs and $1.8 billion of new investment to Southwest Virginia.

Rebecca Tarbotton, director of the Global Finance Campaign here at Rainforest Action Network got a surprising date this week. She went to Citi's annual shareholders meeting to confront the bank's financing of the coal industry. Citi is the largest funder of coal in the United States and as we all know coal is the single biggest source of greenhouse gasses.

During the meeting she asked Citi's CEO to join her on a flight over Appalachia to witness the effects of mountaintop removal, financed by his bank.

He stumbled for a minute, but then the company's chairman said he would commit to taking the trip and seeing firsthand how devastating mountaintop removal coal mining can be.

From today's New York Times:

Marco Di Lauro for The New York Times

At a time when the world’s top climate experts agree that carbon emissions must be rapidly reduced to hold down global warming, Italy’s major electricity producer, Enel, is converting its massive power plant here from oil to coal, generally the dirtiest fuel on earth.

Italy’s Civitavecchia power plant is converting from oil to coal.
Over the next five years, Italy will increase its reliance on coal to 33 percent from 14 percent. Power generated by Enel from coal will rise to 50 percent.

And Italy is not alone in its return to coal. Driven by rising demand, record high oil and natural gas prices, concerns over energy security and an aversion to nuclear energy, European countries are expected to put into operation about 50 coal-fired plants over the next five years, plants that will be in use for the next five decades.

The Astroturf Organization Formerly Known As ABEC has come out with a doozy of a first ad.

In the battle to protect our future, the alphabet list of astroturf organizations working to undercut a habitable tomorrow is an ever-growing soup.  Tracking the  $35 million+ associated with "Americans for Balanced Energy Choices provided easily full-time employment for some dedicated people.

Perhaps, these astroturfers felt some pressure.  Recently formed, just in time for Earth Day, the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity.

When you hear/see that term, think Clear Skies and other Bushisms ... "Clean Coal" is a euphemism for Sort-of Less Dirty Coal, Somewhat Less Polluting Coal, Supposedly Less Deadly Coal.