Hillary Clinton Flunks Coal on West Virginia Public Radio

On West Virginia Public Broadcast early this morning, Hillary Clinton answered questions about her positions on coal. To hear it for yourself, click here.

As we've noted in our profile of her climate policies, her stance on coal flunks the global warming test. Before going into a careful dissection of her remarks, let's remember a few things.

In 2007, the hard work of environmental organizations, business groups, mayors and citizens all over the country managed to halt construction of 50 coal plants from moving forward. James Hansen, the pace-setting climate scientist, has repeatedly exhorted policymakers to abandon coal entirely in order to face down global warming. Otherwise we have little chance, he says.

Republican Governor Charlie Crist of Florida, committed to climate solutions, has stopped new coal plants from being built in his state. In Kansas, Democratic Governor Kathleen Sibelius is fighting to do the same, facing down legislators and very heavy coal industry lobbying in her state. The Wall Street Journal called Kansas "ground zero" in the coal fight in an article just this morning.

So where is the political courage and leadership of this aspiring president on the coal question?

Listen to how she frames it -- all wrong:

Well coal fits in very importantly, um, because obviously we have a great reserve of coal and we get more than 50% of our electricity from coal. The challenge is, how we're going to continue using coal and uh, meet a lot of our environmental challenges.

No, Senator Clinton, the challenge is, how are we going to stop using coal.

It's gets worse.

....and what I have said is that we'll have a new cap and trade system and we'll take a lot of money that we'll get from that cap and trade system and invest it in new forms of energy including clean coal technology.

Currently, the Lieberman-Warner bill gives away for free to poluters hundreds of billions of dollars worth of carbon credits. You'd think that windfall would be enough for the coal industry to go away and see if they couldn't develop clean coal on their own.

Right away I have been advocating that we fund 10 large scale carbon capture and storage projects that will utilize a range of coal types and power plant types and storage locations because it's imperative that we do everything we can to get to a technology that enables us to use clean coal.

There's no such thing as "clean" coal. And what you advocate is something that was published in a MIT report last year, but you leave out an important detail. It will take until 2030 to bring carbon capture and sequestration technology to commercial scale. Both DOE timelines and a leading global energy consulting firm agree on this.

....that supports, you know, the subsidies for coal-to-liquids projects that meet that environmental standard that I think we can set and I'm excited because if we started on it today we have some answers soon

Coal-to liquids? Representative Waxman is working hard to stop further use of coal-to-liquid fuels as they pollute substantially more than the fuels they replace. It's fuel that was developed and used by the isolated Nazi regime during World War II, fuel that Al Gore has said is what junkies will turn to when they run out of the cleaner stuff.

but you saw where the Bush administration just cancelled their big coal project in Illinois for reasons that I don't understand so we are just dragging our feet instead of doing what we all know we need to do to make sure that coal plays a major role but does it in the right way.

It's actually a good thing that the Bush administration cancelled that big coal project - FutureGen. Cost overruns were out of control, and the model was fatally flawed. But did you really say "doing what we all know we need to do to make sure that coal plays a major role but does it in the right way." Please take that back. If you are serious about confronting global warming, coal can have no major role.

At this point in the interview, Beth Vorhees asked "Do you have a position on mountaintop removal mining?" Here's her similarly sorry response.

I am concerned about it for all the reasons people state, but I think its a difficult question because of the conflict between the economic and environmental trade-off that you have here. I’m not an expert. I don’t know enough to have an independent opinion, but I sure would like people who could be objective, understanding both the economic necessities and environmental damage to come up with some approach that would enable us to retrieve the coal but would enable us to do it in a way that wouldn’t damage the living standards and the other important qualities associated with people living both under the mountaintop and people who are along the streams.

You know, maybe there is a way to recover those mountaintops once they have been stripped of the coal. You know, I think we’ve got to look at this from a practical perspective.

We don't know.

Appalachian Voices phrased a response quite charitably.

First, I am glad to see any Presidential candidate speaking about mountaintop removal. Her answer could have been much better, for sure, but it also could have been much worse.

Secondly, I am disappointed that she is setting up this false dichotomy of “economic necessities” vs environmental damage.” Mountaintop removal does the same thing to our economy as it does to our mountains. The destruction of one and the destruction of the other go hand in hand.

Just as a major role for coal in the future goes hand in hand with climate catastrophe.

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