Obama and 'Clean' Kentucky Coal. Posted by Kate Sheppard, Grist, May 6, 2008. "'Barack Obama believes in clean Kentucky coal.' So reads a direct mailer being distributed in Kentucky ahead of the state's May 20 primary... Clark Stevens [of] the Obama campaign in Kentucky confirmed that the mailer came from the campaign... Does Obama really believe in 'clean Kentucky coal?'... There are no plants [with carbon capture and storage technology] in Kentucky... Technically, there is no 'clean Kentucky coal'... [and] most experts predict that wide-scale carbon sequestration is still a decade away... The Obama campaign has made it clear that they want no new coal plants in the meantime... Given that CCS is a decade away, it follows that Obama's policies would amount to a suspension of commercial coal plant construction for the duration of his term... excluding publicly-funded demonstration projects like FutureGen. That would allow for little growth in Kentucky coal, unless it started shipping its coal overseas (as of 2006, 80 percent -- $2 billion worth - was exported)... Meanwhile, Obama may believe in clean Kentucky coal, but many residents of the state are more familiar with the dirty kind... There's a difficult conversation to be had with voters in coal states like Kentucky about the fate of coal and the steps political leaders can take to help coal communities through the coming transition. For the moment, at least, Obama seems unwilling to have that conversation."
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