My husband and I were watching television when a commercial comes on about clean coal power plants. Since we both have been involved in the coal industry, our attention was caught so instead of muting the sound, we watched.

The commercial was produced by some outfit calling itself thisisReality.org. The gist of the commercial was–Coal is Bad! Wind power is the greatest thing since crust on white bread.

Now don’t get me wrong…I am all for alternative energy. Have been for years. I’m just not sure that some of these people have thought about where we would be if we shut down all the coal fired power plants and only relied on “clean” power.

I know that coal is used in other processes besides just powering electric generating plants, but we won’t go there right now. In the area where we live we have a power plant. The plant is owned by Dominion Power and most of the power they generate is sent to Richmond, VA and cities south. If we were to close down that power plant, the economic impact on the area would be disastrous. I can think of at least 4 coal mines, 3 trucking companies, and a company that makes drywall from the gypsum fly ash produced by the plant that would go out of business. CSX would lose revenue from the coal it hauls from mines outside of the area. Those mines would also be laying off miners. Town and businesses in the area would lose revenue because so many in the area lost their jobs when the power plant closed. Multiply that by the number of coal fired power plants across the country…that is one ugly picture.

Then there are the people who got their power from that plant. Where do they get the electric to power all those handy dandy modern conveniences like their central heat and air conditioning, computers, TV’s, etc? How many jobs are then lost because there is no electric to power their places of employment?

Let’s look at California – the leader in anything alternative since the ’60’s. If you travel west on I-10 from the Arizona state line to Los Angeles, you can see acres and acres of non-working, derelict windmills. The population of California whining and demanding that the hydroelectric plants along the Colorado River send all their power to them and screw everyone else. They have rolling blackouts because people don’t want to give up their electrical toys. How are you supposed to charge up your electric car if there is no electric? That “green” car just became a very expensive flower pot. How much of their power is actually generated from all the windmills on top of all the hills.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try alternatives to coal. I spent several years driving truck from the prep plant where they clean a lot of the impurities and trash out of the coal before we hauled it over to the power plant. Coal is a dirty, oily, dusty product that seeps in everywhere and it is hell to keep all that nasty slurry and byproducts under control. Great strides have been made over the years to make it cleaner, less polluting. the steam clouds from the power plant today, are a vast improvement over the clouds from yesteryear.

Before you go around demonizing the very thing that makes it possible for people to watch your commercial on television and the internet…the very thing that allows your voice to be broadcast anywhere, you better have a viable replacement because people aren’t going to give up their creature comforts because the South Pole is melting.

If we could just find a way to generate electricity from hot air expended by all the politicians, lobbyists and supposed experts on global warming, we’d really be on to something.