Miners sit in front of the main building of the Wujek Ruch Slask coal mine in Ruda Slaska, southern Poland, Friday, Sept. 18, 2009. (AP Photo/Alik Keplicz)

The death toll from last week’s terrible explosion at a Polish coal mine has increased to at least 14, according to news reports from The Associated Press.

Coverage of this disaster included an interesting Wall Street Journal blog item about a local news daily calling for the area’s most dangerous mines to be closed and others to be privatized.  There was also this bizarre story about the spokesperson for the Polish state body that runs coal mines being fired after the explosion.

At the same time, the AP reported earlier this week that:

Shares of coal mining companies fell Wednesday after an analyst downgraded the sector, predicting China’s demand has diminished as it has built an excess inventory of steel.

And Barron’s counters:

THE long-term fundamental outlook for coal remains positive as global economic activity, electricity generation and competing fuel prices normalize.

Meanwhile, up in Pittsburgh, the G-20 appears to be ready to endorse President Obama’s call for an end to government subsidies for fossil fuel energy.

As Bloomberg reports:

U.S. President Barack Obama made the case at the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh for a worldwide cut in subsidies to fuels such as oil, natural gas and coal as a way to reduce greenhouse- gas emissions linked to rising temperatures. Environmentalists praised the move, while saying it shouldn’t be considered a replacement for resolving differences among countries on an international climate-change accord. 

In the photo above, taken at the start of the G-20 meetings:

Greenpeace activists are in the process of rappelling off of Pittsburgh’s iconic West End bridge with a massive banner displaying their message to G20 leaders gathering for tomorrow’s summit. The banner, nearly 80-feet by 30-feet in size, took the form of a stylized “road sign” that warns of the political maneuvering and delay that have put a international climate treaty in jeopardy as the world enters the final stretch on the road to Copenhagen.

And Paul Krugman at the New York Times had another incredible column this week on climate issues.  In It’s Easy Being Green, Krugman explains:

The House has already passed a fairly strong cap-and-trade climate bill, the Waxman-Markey act, which if it becomes law would eventually lead to sharp reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. But on climate change, as on health care, the sticking point will be the Senate. And the usual suspects are doing their best to prevent action.

Some of them still claim that there’s no such thing as global warming, or at least that the evidence isn’t yet conclusive. But that argument is wearing thin — as thin as the Arctic pack ice, which has now diminished to the point that shipping companies are opening up new routes through the formerly impassable seas north of Siberia.

Even corporations are losing patience with the deniers: earlier this week Pacific Gas and Electric canceled its membership in the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in protest over the chamber’s “disingenuous attempts to diminish or distort the reality” of climate change.

So the main argument against climate action probably won’t be the claim that global warming is a myth. It will, instead, be the argument that doing anything to limit global warming would destroy the economy. As the blog Climate Progress puts it, opponents of climate change legislation “keep raising their estimated cost of the clean energy and global warming pollution reduction programs like some out of control auctioneer.”

It’s important, then, to understand that claims of immense economic damage from climate legislation are as bogus, in their own way, as climate-change denial. Saving the planet won’t come free (although the early stages of conservation actually might). But it won’t cost all that much either.

How do we know this? First, the evidence suggests that we’re wasting a lot of energy right now. That is, we’re burning large amounts of coal, oil and gas in ways that don’t actually enhance our standard of living — a phenomenon known in the research literature as the “energy-efficiency gap.” The existence of this gap suggests that policies promoting energy conservation could, up to a point, actually make consumers richer.

Second, the best available economic analyses suggest that even deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions would impose only modest costs on the average family. Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office released an analysis of the effects of Waxman-Markey, concluding that in 2020 the bill would cost the average family only $160 a year, or 0.2 percent of income. That’s roughly the cost of a postage stamp a day.

What’s the conclusion?

So here’s the bottom line: The claim that climate legislation will kill the economy deserves the same disdain as the claim that global warming is a hoax. The truth about the economics of climate change is that it’s relatively easy being green.

My old buddy Dave Gustafson, a former Gazette staffer now with The NewsHour, passed on this incredible multimedia piece about coal mining and coal miners.  It’s called Journey to the End of Coal.

Here in West Virginia, the West Virginia Blue blog continued its great commentary on our state’s addiction to coal, with a piece called Lifting the Coal Resource Curse:

How can it be when West Virginia has enjoyed a Century-long abundance of valuable natural resources, it compares so poorly to the rest of the country economically?  How can it be that the counties with the most coal extracted are among the poorest places in the United States? 

Coal Tattoo reader Bob Mooney passed on this interesting piece about the fight over coal in Australia:

Last week, 22 climate change protestors invaded the Hazelwood power plant in Victoria, which is said to produce Australia’s worst greenhouse gas power station emissions.

Bob also forwarded this story from Florida:

Palm Beach County will spend $175,000 to have a federal employee expedite its permit applications.

Despite earlier misgivings about why such a payment should be needed, county commissioners on Tuesday voted to pay the annual salary and benefits to have an Army Corps of Engineer employee designated exclusively for Palm Beach County projects.

Is this a strategy for the coal industry? Sorry … Federal law only allows local government agencies to take advantage of this plan to expedite permit reviews.

Meanwhile, a federal court has re-instituted  a lawsuit filed by eight states and the city of New York against major utilities over the greenhouse gas emissions. Read a new account from Reuters or a more detailed legal review of the decision from the Environmental Appeals Court blog.

That letter-to-Congress faking group American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity reports on its Behind the Plug blog about its love-fest meeting with West Virginia Gov. and chief Friend of Coal Joe Manchin.

Sue Sturgis at Facing South reports on how flooding in Georgia raised concerns about the safety of coal-ash ponds in the area.

From Coal Tattoo’s unofficial mining music consultant, Tony Oppegard, I got this column about whether there  are any happy songs about coal mining.

And finally, Fairmont State University is bringing some stories of the Farmington Mine Disaster to the stage …  Get more information at that link, and watch a taste of it here:

This entry was posted on Friday, September 25, 2009 at 12:38 pm and is filed under Media coverage. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.