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Jacqueline Marcus: Obama Should Use TVA's Kingston Toxic Coal-Sludge Disaster to Make His Case on Clean Energy and Regulation

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 12/30/2008 - 12:43pm.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Jacqueline Marcus

Dear President-Elect Obama,

Here's how you can turn the recent TVA's Kingston toxic, coal-sludge disaster into a strong message that the 18th-19th century industrial polluting model represents an antiquated form of energy that belongs to the past and not the future. President Obama can point to the devastating toxic consequences of the Bush Republican "No Regulation policies." Without enforced regulations, companies will continue to reap profits with no health or environmental concerns whatsoever.

We've seen this happen time and time again. Big polluting oil and coal companies NEED to be severely regulated; and if they violate the laws, it will be committing serious crimes that could lead to big punitive damage fees and jail time.

The environmentalists and the Obama team should roll a LOT of film on the 400 acres of toxic sludge right now before the disaster is hidden from the surface. According to HuffingtonPost.com:

"An environmental disaster of epic proportions just happened in Tennessee. Monday night 2.6 million cubic yards (the equivalent of 525.2 million gallons, 48 times more than the Exxon Valdez spill by volume) of coal ash sludge broke through a dike of a 40-acre holding pond at TVA's Kingston coal-fired power plant covering 400 acres up to six feet deep, damaging 12 homes and wrecking a train.

According to the EPA the cleanup will take at least several weeks, but could take years. Officials also said that the magnitude of this spill is such that the entire area could be declared a federal superfund site."

And if you think this is bad, this is child's play compared to nuclear waste being piled up with no means of safe storage or prevention from cancerous, toxic spills that stay in the environment for thousands of years. Once the Obama team has the footage, they can then run ads: "Is this what they mean by Clean Coal?"

Obama can make his case strongly that it's time to leave the industrial age behind us as "a 19th century antiquated and polluting form of energy." He can tell the people: "That is not our future. It's the past. It's history. And it's over."

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION

Jacqueline Marcus is the author of Close to the Shore (poems) Michigan State University Press and editor of ForPoetry.com. Her political commentaries/letters have been published in BuzzFlash.com, CommonDreams.org, Slate, The Washington Post, New Times' cover story: "The Politics of Restraint," and elsewhere. She taught philosophy at Cuesta College and is currently working on promoting solar energy on the Hawaiian Islands. jackiemarcus@justice.com.

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Back to Reality

Submitted by JTC on Thu, 01/01/2009 - 5:10pm.
Fight Ignorance: Read BuzzFlash What a joke. How is a philosophy teacher and poet supposed to provide a path to clean electricity production and actually allow people to turn on their lights. At what point in time are we going to educate the public on the reality of energy production options. This country produces and has produced over 50% of its energy from coal plants since before I was born. Why?? This country has a lot of coal and our citizens like cheap power. There is not one reliable and renewable energy source that can replace that coal power plant capacity unless we want to cut down all the trees in this country and build unattractive windmills everywhere. Actually, that still wouldn’t be enough. Solar? Ha, let’s get real about the cost and what we really would get from that. The only real option to displace base load coal capacity is new nuclear plants. I know it was the cool thing to protest these plants by the liberals in the past but any electric energy educated person knows that if you want clean (essentially no emissions) electricity production with controllable waste; nuclear is the only answer. It’s easy to criticize every option but what does that really get us. Let’s start educating the public on the reality of our options and offer solutions as well. Oh yeah, and include the cost of doing such.
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Obama

Submitted by tinker_toy on Tue, 12/30/2008 - 1:38pm.

will do whatever the big polluting oil and coal companies TELL him to. Case closed.

Obama hasn't even taken office yet and he's already proving himself to be the treasonous piece of TRASH that we in the real left knew he was all along. He's already broken all major campaign promises, Iraq, Guantanamo, more to come.

We Nader/McKinney/Sheehan supporters did give you plenty of warning, but you blind fools chose not to listen.

Israel's current carnage (if not orchestrated by Obama himself and his consigliere Rahm Emanuel to the last detail) is just a glimpse of what's to come from Obama's foreign policy of American imperialism.

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Thank you tinker_toy

Submitted by Mike5000 on Tue, 12/30/2008 - 2:22pm.
I'm not sure that speaking truth to Wall Street Democrats will achieve anything but it has to be done. Thank you. There are none so blind as those who are getting corporate kickbacks to not see.
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