Environment America is the new home of U.S. PIRG’s environmental work.
The Senate today helped avoid an environmental disaster by rejecting subsidies
and mandates for liquid coal.
With solutions available to address
global warming and dependence on oil, it is a misuse of public funds to
subsidize a technology that increases global warming pollution, costs billions
in taxpayer dollars, increases coal mining, and uses massive amounts of
freshwater.
Leading scientists are calling for significant reductions in the
pollution that causes global warming in order to avoid its worst effects, which
include an eventual 20-foot rise in sea-level from the melting of the Greenland
ice sheet. Developing a widespread liquid coal industry would make it difficult
to achieve those reductions. Liquid coal would lead to liquid Florida, liquid
Louisiana, and liquid low-lying areas around the world.
Time is running short,
but we can still avoid the worst effects of global warming by making our cars
and trucks go farther on a gallon of gas, making our homes and offices more
efficient, and using more renewable energy like wind, solar, and geothermal.
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U.S. PIRG is the federation of state Public Interest
Research Groups. State PIRGs are non-profit, non-partisan public interest
advocacy organizations.
