Coal Comment Chicanery

On Monday March 2nd, I was one of thousands of activists marching in slow solidarity down a snowy street in Washington DC to the coal-fired power plant that heats the Capitol dome. As we surrounded the carbon-belching plant, color coded contingents broke off and positioned themselves in front of every single entrance to the plant. We stood our ground for four hours before peacefully dispersing with no arrests.

It was the single biggest display of united Americans against dirty energy in the history of our democracy. This is what democracy looks like.

When I got home thirty-six hours later, I immediately went to my computer to look up coverage of the action on YouTube. After searching for "capitol coal action," the first footage that came up had about 1000 views, far more than any other video that had been posted to that point. The post is good quality footage of the action, and very well produced. Check it out, it's a good recap of the day. But scroll down to the comments and you'll notice something strange.

In a span of about an hour, twenty comments were posted, every single one of them denying or mocking the global warming debate and the action itself. There are a lot of flags that emerge from such a concentrated spurt of skepticism in response to the most viewed coverage of the action. Why did so many negative comments appear in such a brief span, only to stop in about an hour? Why were so many global warming deniers so responsive to a video that had only 1,000 views?

Finally, has this phenomenon been documented before? The answer to the this question, at least, is clear.

After Al Gore made a very public speech on CNN about global warming in late January, DeSmogBlog eloquently noted that the article was almost immediately lambasted on CNN's website by over 150 "hysterical, bitchy, vitriolic sneers or classic denier talking points."

What to make of this apparently coordinated campaign to debunk global warming via Internet "comment bombs?" Breathe easy, rational earthlings. If dirty energy feels like they have to wage a war of ideas on the Internet, it's safe to say that logic has already claimed victory.

Justice for Oscar Grant

The potential release this weekend of the BART officer charged with murder in the New Year's Day killing of Oscar Grant provoked peaceful protests across Oakland and the Bay Area. Organizers called for the continued detention of the BART officer accused in the killing, as well as for the arrest of the other BART officers present when Oscar Grant was shot once in the back in the early hours of 2009. Dozens of stunned BART passengers watched and filmed the scene.

According to his lawyer, BART officer Johannes Mehserle thought he was using his Taser, not his firearm. Seeing Mehserle's video response after the shot is fired, this defense will likely hold and win him a lighter manslaughter conviction.

As for the other BART officers at the shooting, they will be harder to convict, if they get charged at all. Another angle of the killing on YouTube shows a different officer punching Grant in the face before Grant is thrown to the ground. That officer could be charged with misconduct. But if Mehserle's defense stands in court, it probably would relieve the other officers' culpability for Oscar Grant's actual death.

So what is justice for Oscar Grant? Suppose Mehserle goes to jail and Grant's family wins a settlement with BART and get millions of dollars in a wrongful death suit. These scenarios seem both just and likely. But real justice for Oscar Grant will come when we figure out how to prevent another death like Oscar Grant's.

There are a lot of answers to this question. But one strategy that the massive popular uprising taking place on the streets of the Bay Area could enlist is to demand a ban on the Tasers used by BART cops, even by all the Bay Area police force. If Mehserle's defense holds, then the presence of the Taser caused Grant's death. Without the Taser on his belt, Mehserle would have never have mistaken his firearm for anything but a firearm.

Since 2001, Tasers have killed well over 300 people in the United States; most of the dead weren't even armed. The question is not one of restraint by police officers, but a question of the continued use of unjustified force against an unarmed populace. Don't police have batons and handcuffs for a reason? Can't they contain us with traditional means? Where did the state get the right to shock its citizens into submission?

Perhaps the street demonstrations in Oakland, San Francisco and across the country should shift their message to banning Tasers. It's clear that poor police judgment, gumshoe laziness, and human error have resulted in too many unjust deaths related to police Taser use.

Justice for Oscar Grant will mean money for his family and jail for his killer. But the larger justice will occur when the organizing in the streets pushes for more than what is already likely to happen. If the people in the streets begin to demand a ban on Tasers and a higher burden of justification on the police officers who continue to use the stun guns, their voice will be heard. The organizers can capitalize on the unity behind a common message and the community's disgust behind Grant's death. With everybody pushing, they should be able to force a meaningful debate, if not change a fatal police policy.

An Environmental Litmus Test for Obama

We all have high hopes for the Obama administration and what it can and will accomplish in the first 100 days and beyond. Some policies seem inevitable: an economic bailout package, a plan for ending the debacle in Iraq and the disgrace of the US military base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We are all waiting for Obama to solve the variety of problems that we view as priorities in the reshaping and rebuilding of this country after eight years of darkness, deceit, and malfeasance under the Bush Administration. The St. Petersburg Times is tracking Obama's progress in a helpful format here.

Perhaps the biggest test for the Obama administration will be to buck the trend of dirty energy subsidies and move the country to clean energy like wind, solar, geothermal, and clean biomass. This doesn't only mean signing legislation and issuing executive orders that mandate clean energy. Legislation on global warming is a guarantee. The real question is whether President Obama and Congress will continue the status quo of funding and defending dirty energy companies, their massive profits, and their role in fueling America's overconsumption of its energy supply at the planet's expense.

The first test of the Obama administration's environmental commitment looks to be a resurrection of an old specter in Obama's environmental record: liquefied coal. Coal to liquid or CTL has twice the carbon dioxide emissions of normal diesel fuel without a carbon trapping capacity, about 4.5 billion for one plant without carbon sequestration. Obama co-sponsored a 2007 Senate bill that would have given massive subsidies for research and development into liquefied coal. On the presidential campaign trail, Obama backpedaled in his support for liquefied coal and relented that he would only support such technology if the pollution from the fuel was reduced by 20%, which seemed to quiet the issue in the election, especially since John McCain was also supporting CTL.

But now the CTL issue has resurfaced, albeit quietly, as the United States Air Force is using a staggering $18 to 30 billion dollar gift from Congress to develop a liquefied coal technology that would have all fighter jets running on a highly polluting coal-diesel cocktail by 2016.

This is a real opportunity for Obama to set the clean energy agenda if he is truly serious about moving the United States to reduce our global warming pollution. Obama should move to cancel this project for the Air Force and use the billions of dollars committed to the project to create a new green economy focusing on clean, renewable energy and a sound economic future for the country.

Engineered Geothermal Systems: The Environment-Friendly Future of Electricity

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In his State of the Union address last month, President Bush insisted, “We must continue changing the way America generates electric power.” Bush went on to name “clean” coal and “safe” nuclear technology as his clear favorites to accomplish this task. In fairness to the President, he didn’t have to mention wind and solar energy in addition to coal and nuclear, though he did. But Bush could have had a tremendous impact on the debate over alternative electricity if he had noted in his nationally televised address a study that was commissioned by his own Department of Energy and published by MIT just one day before the State of the Union. If you've got a few spare hours, the novel-length study is published on-line here.

MIT examined an environment-friendly source of energy called Engineered Geothermal Systems (EGS).

EGS involves injecting water into the Earth’s hot crust, then drawing the heated water and steam back to the Earth’s surface and using it to drive the turbines that create electricity. The system is an engineered alternative to naturally occurring hot springs and geysers, which, though currently being used for US electricity production, are limited in their availability. Engineered geothermal systems, on the other hand, make use of the high-temperature granite that is available anywhere in the United States.

How beneficial would EGS be for the United States? According to the MIT study, the amount of extractable energy in US territory alone would be well over 2000 times the annual consumption rate of energy. MIT notes that in practice, the actual amount of energy number could increase by a factor of ten.

Economically, the cost would not be insignificant; we’re talking about up to one billion dollars in research and development over the next fifteen years. But even in this most expensive scenario, this price tag would still be less costly than building just one new “clean” coal power plant, according to MIT’s analysis.

Environmentally, EGS leaves a minimal “footprint,” creating no waste runoff and inserting a negligible amount of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse” gases into the atmosphere. It’s even possible to inject wastewater into the earth (as opposed to clean water), offering a keen recycling alternative to industrial pollution in our rivers and oceans.

France and Australia have been at the forefront in the development of EGS in recent years. Using the advances that these countries have made, the United States could produce a functional electric grid partially based on EGS by 2025. With further investment and the privatization of these industries, EGS could generate most American electricity by 2050, based on MIT estimates. The price tag of one billion dollars should not scare us, even if every penny comes directly out of taxpayers’ wallets. After all, we’ve spent many hundreds times that amount occupying a country that exports to us a non-renewable, environmentally degrading, and economically hazardous fuel for our energy needs. It’s time to get smart with our energy dependence and invest in EGS.