LETTERS 



Coal Wars 



Jeff Goodell ["Cooking the 

 Climate with Coal," 05/06] 

 identifies two factors con- 

 tributing to our increased 

 reliance on coal, namely the 

 self-interest of the coal in- 

 dustry and the denial of 

 global warming. But he fails 

 to note an equally important 

 cause: the single-minded 

 focus of the environmental 

 movement on opposing nu- 

 clear power, in the process 

 giving coal what amounts 

 to a pass. That's ironic, be- 

 cause nuclear power, what- 

 ever its faults, emits essen- 

 tially no greenhouse gases. 



It's time for environ- 

 mentalists to rethink their 

 priorities and make stabi- 

 lizing the global climate 



job number one. 



John Andrews 



Sag Harbor, New York 



The objectivity of any arti 

 cle purporting to 

 deal with energy 

 that dismisses nu- 

 clear power in one 

 sentence as "uncer- 

 tain" is open to 

 skepticism. It, as 

 Jeff Goodell s arti- 

 cle does, it then 

 goes on to embrace 

 the truly unproven 

 technology of "se- 

 questering" 7 bil- 

 lion tons of C0 2 

 annually (adding 5 

 billion tons of oxy- 

 gen to the 2 billion 

 tons of carbon in 







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the coal used by the U.S. 

 and China alone), it is not 

 worth reading. 



Nuclear power generates 

 zero C0 2 and negligible 

 waste volume, 

 compared with 

 any fossil-fuel 

 technology. A ra- 

 tional environ- 

 mentalist must fa- 

 vor building new- 

 generation nuclear 

 power plants to re- 

 place existing fos- 

 sil-fuel capacity as 

 rapidly as possible. 

 That's the envi- 

 ronmental Man- 

 hattan Project that 

 would actually 

 work to reduce 

 the contribution 



of C0 2 to global warming 

 significantly in our life- 

 times, and without major 

 economic dislocation. 

 Richard B. Mott 

 Ringoes, New Jersey 



Jeff Goodell's thought- 

 provoking commentary still 

 failed to mention the great- 

 est threat of coal-combus- 

 tion emissions; uncontrolled 

 coal mine fires. According 

 to the Pittsburgh Post Gazette 

 (February 15, 2003), un- 

 controlled coal mine fires 

 in China "make a big, hid- 

 den contribution to global 

 warming through the 

 greenhouse effect. Each year 

 they release 360 million 

 tons of carbon dioxide into 

 (Continued on page 50) 



NATURAL HISTORY July/August 2006 



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