Feb 24 Press Release: Inletkeeper Joins National Coal Campaign

 

The Dirty Lie Fact Sheet

 

What is The Dirty Lie?

 

A fact-based campaign (www.thedirtylie.com) debunking the clean coal con.

 

The website’s core is a series of interactive lies that the coal industry and our elected officials perpetuate, including the dirtiest lie of all: coal is clean.  Each lie is exposed using scientific and legal facts, videos, graphics, and mash-ups (re-mixes of existing video or audio files). 

 

From cradle to grave, coal is a filthy source of energy that impacts all of us.  The dirty lies address the entire coal cycle from mining to transportation to burning to waste storage and climate change and the effects each has on public and environmental health, miner and community safety, economics, and renewable sources of energy. 

 

How is The Dirty Lie different than other anti- clean coal campaigns?

 

The Dirty Lie is grounded in the Waterkeeper movement’s solid track record of advocacy against the coal industry at the international, national, and regional levels. 

 

The Dirty Lie’s power lies with our grassroots movement: the success of The Dirty Lie rests with the experience and passion of all of us – not just the Waterkeepers with coal mines and coal-fired power plants, but everyone affected by mercury pollution, acid rain, and climate change.

 

The Dirty Lie considers coal from cradle to grave: While many other groups are focusing on a singular aspect of coal use, such as climate change, TDL is targeting the entire coal cycle.  Our approach negates industry’s stop-gap responses to specific issues, like carbon sequestration technologies to address climate change or sorbent injection for mercury capture.  It is our position that no matter what the coal industry does, coal can never be clean.

 

An extensive “Take Action” portion of the site is dedicated to citizen engagement and advocacy, and includes empowering tools such as petitions and action alerts to elected officials and industry representatives; downloadable banners, desktops, and widgets; template letters to the press, grocers, and utilities; energy conservation measures; and The Dirty Lie posters and “Missing Mountain” flyers to hang in your community.

 

Who is Waterkeeper Alliance?

 

Waterkeeper Alliance is one of the world’s fastest growing environmental organizations, with nearly 200 local Waterkeepers patrolling rivers, lakes and coastal waterways on six continents. Chaired by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Waterkeeper Alliance connects and supports local Waterkeeper programs to provide a voice for waterways and their communities worldwide.  For more information please visit www.waterkeeper.org.

 

We hope you’ll join us in this important fight.

 

 

Talking Points

  

“Clean coal” is nothing but a dirty lie: from mining to transportation to burning it, coal is destroying our natural resources, poisoning our fish and our children, and endangering our communities.

 

 Even if we were able to capture and store the carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants, it still wouldn’t make coal clean – carbon capture only addresses the impacts of burning coal on our climate, not the multitude of other harmful impacts of our addiction to coal.

 

All types of mining, from underground mining to strip mining and mountaintop removal, are destructive and dangerous.

 

Active mining waste and abandoned mine drainage contains arsenic, beryllium, lead, and selenium.   

 

There are currently 1,100 coal-fired power plants in the U.S. alone.

 

Where there’s a coal-fired power plant, there’s coal combustion waste, often stored in unlined and unmonitored pits, ponds, and dumps.  Coal combustion waste contains heavy metals and toxins.

 

To see a map of coal-fired power plants and their ash disposal sites and methods, visit: http://projects.publicintegrity.org/coalash/

 

Coal-fired power plants emit 48 tons of mercury each year and are the leading source of mercury contamination in the U.S. 

 

Mercury is a potent neurotoxin. 

       Pregnant women who eat mercury-contaminated fish pass the mercury on to their babies.  High levels of exposure effect neurological development, leading to developmental delays and learning disabilities, impairments in cognitive thinking, memory, attention, language usage, and fine motor and visual spatial skills.

 

Nearly all of the fish and shellfish in U.S. waters are contaminated with mercury. 

 

All 50 states have mercury fish consumption advisories.

 

The Food & Drug Administration does not require grocers or restaurants to post mercury consumption information.

 

 

Climate change is fueled by coal – coal contributes 80 percent of the greenhouse gases from the energy sector. 

 

 

While the coal industry and even elected officials claim carbon capture and sequestration can make coal clean, it is an unproven technology that is completely ineffective at addressing any of the other societal ills caused by our coal dependence.   

 

 

Coal is not, and never will be, clean.  To protect our water and natural resources, communities, and future generations we must move away from coal and toward renewable energy sources.