Coal is the culprit

Burned Up About the Other Fossil Fuel

By Dana Milbank
Washington Post
Tuesday, June 24, 2008

Here's something to ponder as you park your Prius: What if gas guzzling isn't the problem?

That rather counterintuitive theme emerged yesterday from a visit to Washington by James E. Hansen, director of NASA's Goddard Institute and one of the first to sound the alarm about global warming in a congressional hearing 20 years ago yesterday. As he undertook a commemorative, I-told-you-so tour, from Diane Rehm's radio show to ABC News to the National Press Club to the House of Representatives, he made a point of saying the biggest worry isn't what we put in our cars, but what we put in our power plants.

"Practically, I don't see how we can stop putting the oil in the atmosphere, because that's owned by Russia and Saudi Arabia," he advised the House committee on global warming. "We can make our vehicles more efficient, but that oil is going to get used and it's going to get in the atmosphere . . . and it doesn't really matter much how fast we burn it. But what we could do is stop the coal."

The theme was much the same at the press club, where he gave a luncheon speech. "CO2from oil is going to get into the atmosphere," he said, because "you're not going to be able to tell Saudi Arabia and Russia, the countries that have oil, not to sell their oil." Hansen's solution: "Phase out coal as promptly as is practical."

(Continued here.)