Kilowatt Ours .org

[greyl]

http://www.kilowattours.org/

Kilowatt Ours Reveals the Consequences of Our Coal Powered Economy.

The film opens with Vice President Dick Cheney's energy policy speech in which Cheney makes the claim that America needs nearly 1900 new power plants in the next 20 years to meet projected electricity demands.

From here, filmmaker Jeff Barrie takes viewers on a journey from the coal mines of West Virginia to the solar panel fields of Florida, as he discovers solutions to America's energy related problems.

----------

Kilowatt Ours Shares Practical Answers
Along the way, Jeff and his wife Heather share a plan to eliminate their use of coal and nuclear power at home by employing energy conservation, energy efficiency and newnewable energy sources.

Through their learning experience, viewers discover how they can save hundreds of dollars annually on energy bills, and use a portion of the savings to purchase newnewable energy.

Kilowatt Ours invites viewers to help build a net zero nation, by conserving energy to the greatest extent possible at home, then using clean renewable energy to provide the electricity used.
http://www.kilowattours.org/energy-conservation-film.php

(This 60 minute movie is currently being run on pbs)
ps. fluorescent bulbs!

[GrpCaptMandrake]

1. An excellent film!

And one that will, perhaps, show people what the true cost of coal-fired energy really is. The instatiable national lust for more energy is literally destroying my homeland and that of thousands more in rural Appalachia for no return and no future.

See this film.

An update. My morning paper has just arrived. A gang of hateful, old "conservative" judges on the 4th Circuit bench in Richmond has ruled that the Coal Barons may proceed unchecked in their attempt to destroy every last wild place in the Appalachians in pursuit of coal and in direct contravention of the Clean Water Act.

This is no Happy Thanksgiving here in the hills and hollers of West Virginia.

:scared: :grr: :nuke: :evilfrown:

[greyl]

2. Yes, it is a great movie.

It's funny how we (i anyway) have tended to focus on the evils of oil, while being funtionally ignorant of the evils of energy from coal, isn't it? We just don't hear about it. For example, the movie described and showed video of the horrible coal slurry disaster that happened a few years ago which I had never heard about, or at least don't remember hearing about.

Just after midnight on October 11, a Martin County Coal computer operator at Kentucky's largest mountaintop removal site noticed a glitch in a coal conveyor belt system. Workers sent to inspect the problem found a whirlpool of sludge swirling inside the site's 72-acre coal slurry impoundment. The "pond" had sprung a major leak.

A crack had opened up between the bottom of the 2.2 billion gallon impoundment and the underlying underground mine. Before workers could get control of the situation, about 250 million gallons of lava-like black sludge gushed into the mine. The sludge exploded out two mine portals and into two creeks. (The Exxon Valdez oil tanker spill was "only" eleven million gallons of oil.)

Residents along Coldwater Creek and Wolf Creek awoke to a nightmare. Thick black gunk oozed out of the creek banks -- at some points up to ten feet deep, in other spots up to seventy yards wide -- swallowing backyards, gardens and driveways and annihilating fish and other aquatic life. EPA officials said it was miraculous that no (human) life was lost.

Cleanup operations began, creating new disasters as equipment roared in the once quiet hollows, crushing septic tanks, breaking water lines and scraping sludge covered vegetation off stream banks. Residents have spotted backhoe operators "cleaning up" by turning layers of sludge-contaminated soil over into deeper, cleaner soil. At the peak of the cleanup, 500 workers and 300 pieces of equipment -- bulldozers, dredges and tanker trucks -- worked around the clock, costing Martin County Coal $10,000 per hour. Officials estimate the cleanup will cost over $46 million (activists expect it will cost much more) and will take at least six months, although they say a total cleanup is impossible. Some sludge will be stirred every time there is a heavy rain.
http://www.ohvec.org/issues/slurry_impoundments/articles/2002_12.html

edit: another story about the slurry disaster:

Under Mined
When a flood of toxic mining sludge wreaked havoc in Appalachia, how did the White House respond? By letting the coal company off the hook and firing the whistleblower.

http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0501.bingham.html