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It's a coincidence that this Tuesday both the registered Democrats of Pennsylvania and CitiGroup's shareholders will be casting their votes. In Pennsylvania, it's a choice between Obama and Clinton, and at Citi there's a proxy statement full of issues -- but in both cases the troubling face of climate and coal is on view.

With 47,000 coal workers in Pennsylvania and West Virginia -- critical states for both nomination and election -- Obama and Clinton have been campaigning along a tight rope suspended between the opposite poles of a glaring contradiction: promising strong climate action and a bright future for coal.

Citi's shareholders face a choice laden with a similar contradiction. They have a stake in a bank that has promised vigorous action on climate change, yet financing coal is an important source of profits. In fact, Citi is one of the leading financiers of mountaintop removal mining (MTR).

Now shareholder proposal #9 (on page 86 of the 2008 Proxy Statement available here) is asking shareholders to tell the bank to stop dirtying its hands with profits from coal: