From Environment New York’s Anna Aurilio:
This is not the type of “green job” I want to create through President Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Plan.
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The big coal companies want to build factories — factories that can cook coal at nearly 1,300 degrees Fahrenheit, producing black, gunky coal tars that they can process into liquid fuels for war planes.
During the process, they’d release far more climate-changing greenhouse emissions than an oil company would to drill, refine and transport an equivalent amount of petroleum.
And they want you and me to pay for it.
That’s right, industry lobbyists have conspired with a few key members of the U.S. Senate to tack on $50 billion in loan guarantees to the president’s recovery plan — $50 billion that, instead of creating green jobs building wind turbines, or installing solar roofs, or weatherizing homes and other buildings, would subsidize things like coal liquefaction and nuclear power plant construction.
What am I missing? Didn’t we just work like crazy to elect a pro-environment majority to set a course for the cleaner, greener energy economy of the future? Why on earth would we want to subsidize not-so-clean coal, especially if doing so accelerates global warming?
That’s not the green recovery we’ve been fighting for. And that’s why I’m hoping you’ll join me and thousands of our friends and supporters in calling on Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to keep President Obama’s recovery bill clean and green.
As you might have already guessed, this $50 billion giveaway is buried in the fine print of the Senate’s version of the recovery plan, the better to avoid public scrutiny.
Fortunately, our friends on Capitol Hill tipped us off, and now you can help us scrub the recovery bill clean of this dirty provision.
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