Too often the logic regarding coal follows an analogy like this:

Environemntalists are against big cars as they pollute a lot.

Your a big guy, and drive a 1970 Chrysler Newport to work. People say you are very wasteful and polluting for doing as such.

You are told you should buy a compact car. You agree that you should pollute less, and offer to buy a 2008 Chevy Impala, which pollutes much less, particularly of harmful smog causing chemicals. Environmentalists block your purchase, claiming it still releases too much pollution in an era when we should be concerned about global warming.

Your simply too big to fit into a compact car.

That's how it usually goes with coal power plants. We are willing to keep old polluting plants online, and unwilling to permit the construction of new plants that would be more efficient, produce 5-10% less carbon dioxide emissions per megawatt, and significantly reduces even more harmful emissions such as sulfur dioxide and mercury.

There are sources of energy that are cleaner then coal. Yet, they are more expensive and not as practical as burning coal in many regions of the country. Renewables are certainly part of our future in our country, and will provide for a slice of new power needed to fulfill the growth for demand in our energy for our country.

Yet, we are not talking about replacing renewable sources of power with coal. We are talking about replacing old coal power plants, with newer cleaner plants, that pollute less. Coal is always going to be troublesome proposition with it's greenhouse gases and wastes, but we can try to minimize it's harm by using technology advanced methods of burning coal.

I do not support increasing the amount of coal that is burned to create power in our country. I would even go as far as to support a cap on megawatts of energy generated by coal, and using efficiency gains to reduce our consumption of coal. I do support keeping our level of coal consumption relatively consistent, with a long term goal of phasing it out as renewables and conservation take up a greater portion of our energy consumption.

Carbon sequestration should not be part of any plan for new coal power. Instead, new coal power plants should focus on efficiency, getting as much potential energy out of coal. That will maximize the reduction in carbon dioxide emissions. Cleaner plants will not only reduce carbon emissions but many other harmful emissions.