While it is easy to hop on the Green Peace bandwagon and criticize coal use, take a minute to imagine a day in our society without coal, a day without iPods, TVs, computers, and reliable electricity. Coal allows us to live the lifestyle we have grown accustomed to at an affordable price. The U.S. would revert to a third world country if coal were taken out of our energy mix.

Do I support alternative energy generation? Yes, I think we will need all generation forms available in order to continue living the lifestyle we have grown accustomed to. I do not, however, think such a lifestyle would be possible without the baseload capacity of coal.

We should instead encourage our lawmakers to provide funding and human resources to promote technologies such as Carbon Capture and Sequestration, which help to eliminate the pollutants from coal generation.

If you were serious about cleaning up the environment, you would be better off coming to the realization that coal is a necessary piece of our generation mix and, instead of fighting it, encourage those in power to work toward cleaning its emissions.

Ted O'Brien

Class of 2008