Produced by:
KBOO
Program::
Air date:
Thu, 03/22/2012 - 9:30am to 10:00am
Coal Exports and the Future of the Columbia Gorge
Coal Exports and the Future of the Columbia Gorge
Coal Trains rolling down The Columbia Gorge. Mile and a half long open coal trains, not 1 a day not even just 10 a day but up to 60 a day, carrying the worlds dirtiest form of energy to huge coal export terminals at St. Helens, Longview and other points along the Oregon & Washington coast. This is what big coal companies have in mind for the future of this area with hopes of exporting 140 million tons of this black death to China and other Asian markets. Join host, Linda Olson-Osterlund and her guests Mike Rockwell of Communities for a Coal Free Gorge & Ted Nace, author of Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal and founder of CoalSwarm, an online resource on the global fight against coal.
Comments
Coal Exports
We in CommunityRights Vancouver are also working to stop coal exports through Vancouver WA.
Our approach is different and more bold than traditional activism. Instead of writing letters to those in authority, we are planning to act on our own authority to ban coal-for-export through Vancouver. We have the right to protect our quality of life. Our State Constitution gives us that authority.
We will place a municipal ballot measure before the voters to determine the will of the people. We need help to collect 6000 signatures. We can be reached at crvancouverusa@gmail.com.
I could see our effort ending up in the Supreme Court. Who has more rights . . . the stockholders of Peabody coal, or the million people who must contend with the noise, pollution, and traffic congestion resulting from 40 miles of coal trains passiong through every day?
In light of the fact that California, Oregon, and Washington have announced the shutdown date for all coal burning power plants, it seems hypocritical for us to be sending 40 miles of coal trains per day to China to encourage the building of 100 new coal burning power plants there, and locking them into coal for 100 years.
Some of these coal trains may pass through Portland on their way to coal terminals in Coos Bay, and St. Helens
I can be reached at 360 892 1589
Don Steinke
Kinder Morgan owns the government
This is an enormously corrupt industry. Here in Portland, one of the proposed coal terminal companies, Kinder Morgan, has demonstrated its political power by buying off the past U.S. Attorney, the DOJ, the DEQ, the ports, the labor unions such as the longshoremen, the river pilots, etc., when there are illegal acts to be covered up, like the Kinder Morgan ocean dumping case. It is checkbook justice. Their spokesmen tell the public what it wants to hear, but in the backroom they are buying off all the people who are supposed to be working for the public. A company like Kinder Morgan knows that hiding the truth can be bought for a price they are able to pay.