Coal-fired plants are the only way to currently meet demand. The same people who say we must lessen our dependence on foreign oil are many of the same that supported the Clinton administration making the largest reserve of high-grade coal in the world part of a "wildlife preserve".
If we are serious about ending this impending "crisis", Let us all encourage the Bush administration to reverse this idiocy and open up the vast coal fields and give incentives to companies to build more coal-fired plants.
A local inventor has developed a process for burning even high-sulpher content coal cleanly without the use of scrubbers.
See this story: http://www.tennessean.com/local/archives/02/06/18534925.shtml?Element_ID=18534925
I asked him what exactly he was saving the oil and coal for. The question floored him, and all he could eventually stammer out was that the question was absurd.
A while back I wrote this letter to the Transylvania Times [Brevard, NC]:
Editor--I read with interest the article "WNC death rate linked to air quality" in your May 26th edition. The piece was intended to be a summary of the GAO report written at the request of Congressman Taylor, and implied that coal-fired power plants in Tennessee were responsible for respiratory deaths in and around the Great Smoky Mountains.
During these modern times, one must expect articles such as this when a journalist writes a slanted story on a bogus report produced by accountants posing as scientists for a power-hungry politician. But before your readers in WNC run out and buy more life insurance, I hope they will spend a moment thinking of two things.
Exactly when and how did the Smoky Mountains get smoky?
The answers are simple: A smoky blue haze was hanging over these mountains millions of years ago - long before the first power plant or automobile was ever thought of, and long before mankind ever built campfires here. When the Cherokee Indians first came, they named the area Sha-co-na-qe, meaning "place of blue smoke." (The Cherokees, apparently being more intelligent than Congressman Taylor, did not blame TVA power plants or automobiles on the Parkway for the blue haze, but instead called the place sacred.)
The reason for the haze over our mountains is the trees and vegetation!
Each tree in the Smoky Mountains emits 3-5 times as many Volatile Organic Compounds [VOCs] per unit weight as the EPA would allow if it were…say…a bakery. On a hot summer day, roughly a million gallons of water vapor and 100 pounds of hydrocarbons are given off by each square mile of forest in North Carolina. These naturally-produced VOCs - mostly isoprenes and terpenes - combine with Nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere and the energy from the sun to produce ozone. It is the ozone which causes the haze and some of the respiratory problems, although the isoprenes and terpenes are themselves believed to be carcinogenic. The pollen can be a health problem, too, as many of us know.
So if Congressman Taylor is serious about curing the alleged respiratory problems in the Smoky Mountains, he should introduce legislation to have the mountains clear cut and paved with asphalt.
That makes about as much sense as what he is proposing, which is to bring the California power crisis to North Carolina.