ISBN: 0618319409
List Price: $25.95
Amazon Price: $16.35
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Summary: Bad business practice in the Coal Industry
This book would be good if it had a different title, say "How the Coal business is ruining the World :( I know I'm a hypocrite as I use electricity)" A folksy chat about lives destroyed and people impoverished etc etc. Unfortunately another diatribe against poor business practice, a ruined environment and 'bad guys' in big business exploiting the vulnerable. But not about the coal business how it works and what it does ie Big Coal. Mr Goodell is a journalist who wants to be a novelist. The publishing industry should know better.
Summary: Dirty Power and the Cronies Who Love It
Add this book to the growing supply of expansive investigative reports on the true issues behind America's (and the world's) energy policies. Jeff Goodell offers a strong political economy focus that avoids both environmental horror-mongering and shifty industrial denials, with equitable and realistic reporting on all of the above. Goodell starts with an examination of the modern (actually the not-so-modern) coal business, and expands his analysis to include all of the social, political, economic, and environmental effects of the industry's operations. This includes the illnesses, poverty, and inequality faced by people who live near coalmines and power plants (particularly the unending misery and exploitation of both the people and environment of Appalachia); the political shenanigans and economic attack-dog strategies of old-school coal barons and their pocketed politicians; and coal's growing legacy of pollution and its severe contribution to global warming and climate change.
Goodell's analysis is an excellent example of the political economy method, in which typical complaints about problems in either category are not the end of the discussion, but are used as examples in a stronger analysis of real-world causes and effects, especially as applied to present and future political/economic trends and their effects on real people. In a nutshell, we learn that coal might be (relatively) cheap, plentiful, and easy to obtain, but it is not the solution to the world's growing energy supply difficulties. The problem is not just pollution, but also the creeping economic and social realities that arise from our dependence on an outdated industry, that blocks much-needed innovations by distorting free market processes and keeping citizens in the dark. Goodell fleshes out his strong analysis with a healthy amount of cynicism and a useful look at how citizens can make a difference in putting coal where it really belongs - the dirty dustbin of history. [~doomsdayer520~]
Summary: The Problem with Coal
When the politicians say anything except how bad their opponet is they say what they think that we want to hear. The truth, even if they knew it, is painful. And no politician who wants to get elected talks about pain. After all, his opponet will be telling everyone just how good it is and that if we only elect them all will be wonderful.
The truth is that we are running out of energy, specifically cheap, easy to get energy. This book talks about one of the answers that has been talked about over and over, increasing use of coal. The author, quite correctly points out some of the problems with considering coal to be the solution:
Coal is a horrible polluter. The biggest pollution from it is carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas. Increasing consumption will make global warming worse. In spite of what the Government is saying, global warming is real. One effect of global warming is bad storms - ask the people in New Orleans.
The easy to get coal has already been mined. What's left is of lower quality, in smaller deposits, harder to mine, more expensive to get.
What the book doesn't have is a solution. Here are the problems in coal. There are also big problems in all of the other areas talked about:
Biofuels - By the time you consider fertilizer (made mostly from natural gas), farming (lots of big diesel powered machinery), converting to fuel there is a real question as to whether you gain any net energy.
Hybrid cars - They will either use gasoline, diesel fuel, or will be plugged into the electric grid at night. That means more coal burned.
Solar power - very expensive, it will get better, but unlikely to provide a big answer.
Nuclear power - probably the only real answer but not very popular with the public.
Most people don't vote, don't read the paper, don't really care except that gasoline has gotten more expensive. The public doesn't want to know, they just want the light to come on when they flip the switch without having any understanding at all as to why it does.
The book doesn't offer a solution because there isn't a solution except to change our whole lifestyle, and we don't want to do that.
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