Nevada Coal News:
Some more interesting tid-bits about coal in the news this week. Jon Ralston has an interesting interview with Sierra Pacific’s CEO, Michael Yackira, which ran in Wednesday’s LV Sun. Some favorite quotes include, but are certainly not limited to:
“We believe that less carbon in the air is a good thing for the environment, and we are foursquare behind that,”
Then why choose to burn coal in a place that has some the cleanest air in the country?
“We’re committed to improving the environment,” he said. “We’re committed to delivering safe, reliable power to our customers at predictable prices. All these things really factor into what our plans are.”
Which is why your hitting the media circuit to drag a guy (Reid) through the mud who has actually proposed legislation that would allow you to accomplish those very things.
You can check out the Sierra Pacific Ely Energy Center for your self by clicking here.
cartoon by Erik Holland
Great Basin National Park–if you have ever stood on top of Wheeler Peak and looked out at Nevada and Utah 360 degrees and seen the spectacular view, you know how much coal fired plants would trash the place.
What about Lehman Caves? I’ll be curious what it does to the color of limestone. (a window to the past due to climate changes)
WTF? Yackira admits that coal is dirty and that there needs to be a better solution, then chucks the backlash at Reid for proposing one? It’s baffling his comments don’t appear to be with the environment’s or his consumer’s best interests at heart. This guys sounds like someone who’s nothing more than angry that he’s led his company down the wrong path and like so many others in Nevada, he wants to blame Harry Reid for his misfortunes.
We have to start somewhere with renewables and fast. Why not make Nevada that place now?
On Tuesday, Michael Yackira admitted on Face to Face with Jon Ralston that there is no such thing and clean coal…so why is Sierra Pacific still trying to move forward with a coal-fired power plant (that will emit an estimated 10.4 BILLION tons of carbon dioxide EVERY YEAR!)? It makes my head hurt.
Exactly. No coal is clean coal. I see from time to time commercials and advertisements promoting the phrase. Spread the word that clean coal is an oxymoron. We can’t expect our neighbors to help in the effort if they are being programed to believe in the imaginary.
Tell your friends! No coal is clean coal!
An interesting and related article that I thought you all would appreciate – http://www.wired.com/science/planetearth/magazine/15-10/mf_burning?currentPage=1
You guys are doing an excellent job covering this issue and making it clear that it’s worthy of national attention. Look for a post about this to appear on Patagonia’s blog (www.thecleanestline.com) tomorrow, Wed. Oct. 11. I tried to keep it brief and to-the-point. Please leave comments on it if you feel that anything important was overlooked.
keep up the good fight
lc
Hey LC,
thanks for the plug, if you need more info or context be sure to check out our Daily Weethump column on the right had side of the blog. I try to track and update it with pertinent articles from Nevada’s papers as well as national media sources.
Also look for pictures from the White Mountains in a few days, some pretty big looking lines up there that were nicely highlighted from a snowstorm on last Friday.
Cheers,
RB