NYT: Even as Congress pushes 'green' legislation, they back coal as 'alternative fuel' RAW STORY

Published: Monday May 28, 2007 Print This Email This House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) led a delegation to Greenland over the weekend to witness "firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality." She said Monday that she hoped President Bush would consider a "different way" on global warming. "There is just no denying" the reality of climate change, she said. "It wasn't caused by the people of Greenland  it was caused by the behavior of the rest of the world," Pelosi told reporters. However, many of her colleagues in Congress continue to push coal as an 'alternative fuel' and a green way to cut US dependence on foreign oil, despite concerns from environmental watchdogs. Both Democrats and Republicans are "pushing to subsidize coal as the king of 'alternative fuels,'" reports the New York Times. "Environmental groups are adamantly opposed," writes Edmund Andrews, "saying that coal-based diesel fuels produce at least as much in greenhouse gases as gasoline and about twice as much if it is produced without special measures to capture and store carbon dioxide." However, the powerful coal lobby spends millions of dollars each year pushing coal as a clean, alternative fuel. President Bush has even "stressed the importance of coal as an alternative to oil and deliberately referred to the need for 'alternative fuels' rather than simply 'renewable fuels.' Administration officials say that was specifically to make room for coal." Excerpts from the New York Times piece follow: # The political momentum to subsidize coal-based fuels is in odd juxtaposition to simultaneous efforts by Democrats, who are also drafting bills to address global warming that would place new restrictions on coal-fired electric power plants. The move reflects a tension, which many lawmakers gloss over, between slowing global warming and reducing dependence on foreign oil. Many analysts say the United States' huge coal reserves could indeed provide a substitute for foreign oil. But most say that greater use of coal would do little or nothing to slow global warming and could speed it up. ... Coal industry executives insist that their fuel can actually be cleaner than oil, because the production plants would capture and store the gas created during production and use renewable "biomass" fuels for part of the process. But none of that has been done at commercial volumes, and many analysts say the economic issues are far from settled. # READ THE FULL NY TIMES REPORT HERE



