Green Options

Tuesday’s initial reports about the coal ash disaster in Harriman, Tennessee at the TVA’s Kingston Power Plant turned out to be false. The Tennessee Valley Authority initially estimated the spill to be approximately 500 million gallons, although they have now amended their estimate to 5.4 million cubic yards of toxic waste, which is the equivalent of over one billion gallons.

Unnatural disasters have become a fact of life dependent upon fossil fuels. The latest of these disasters came early Monday morning when a coal slurry impoundment at the TVA Kingston Power Plant near Harriman, TN burst, allowing approximately 500 million gallons of toxic coal ash to rush into the surrounding community.

The strange appearance and sudden disappearance of the ‘Clean Coal Carolers’ - an industry sponsored Flash animation of pieces of coal, dressed in warm hats and scarves, singing adaptations of traditional Christmas tunes.

While this is an important step in stopping the practice of mountaintop removal, altogether, the Bank of America’s bold statement on MTR turned out to fall a bit short of miraculous. In fact, the banking giant now plans to invest more money in the unproven ‘clean coal’ technology of carbon capture and storage.

In Tuesday night’s debate, not only did McCain ignore the potential solutions presented by truly clean and renewable sources of energy, but he even went so far as to discount Senator Obama’s concern about the disposal and storage of nuclear waste, describing Obama’s position as “something like that”.

This week is going to be big for American energy policy. By week’s end, it is likely that we will see the US Congress vote on any number of energy bills.

Last week I wrote about the US Senate race in Colorado featuring Democratic congressman Mark Udall - now is the time to feature his cousin, fellow congressman and fellow senatorial candidate, Tom Udall of New Mexico. Udall received some great news in the past week when the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee canceled all their ad buys in New Mexico. Given their prior commitment to refuse spending money in races they couldn’t win, they seem to have taken all steps in conceding the race, short of actually pulling their candidate. In this now-uncontested race, Udall faces current GOP Congressman from New Mexico’s 2nd Congressional district, Steve Pearce. As with all of the senatorial and congressional races that I’ll be highlighting this fall, the Senate race in New Mexico has significant implications for environmental policy. Now that the GOP has all but bailed on Pearce, we can even be a bit more certain about what those implications will be.

On Monday night, three colleagues of mine from the Kentucky Kernel were arrested while documenting the protests outside the Republican National Convention. Nothing indicates that any of the three were actually participating in the protests, much less violating any laws that would warrant their arrest.

Recently, Mark Udall has waffled on his longstanding commitment to the environment, throwing in his lot with the “Gang of 10″. This is an important development because Udall has, until now, been known as part of the staunch opposition to offshore drilling.

While Stevens’ federal investigation surely hasn’t helped his efforts (Tim Hurst has a great post on Senator Stevens’ list of indictments), he has only been ahead in two polls this whole year. Since Since Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was indicted by a federal grand jury. Mark Begich has extended his lead considerably, leading by 17 points in the most recent polls. Reelection is surely looking tough for Stevens, who has long been known as an enemy of environmentalists and a [...]