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We Can No Longer Ignore the Not-So-Hidden Financial and Human Costs of Coal

If, like me, you are anxious for the healthcare debate to be over so Congress can get back to passing clean-energy legislation – think again. Human health should, in fact, be a prime driver of meaningful clean-energy legislation.

While it is true that we will be using some fossil fuels for the foreseeable future – we must solidly rebuke requests for funding of any new coal plants (with carbon capture and storage or otherwise), ‘clean coal,’ and ‘coal-to-liquid’ fuels on financial and health grounds. From mining to combustion, coal disproportionally affects the health of low-income people and communities of color. Even if we were to get past the technological and cost hurdles of new coal technologies – the coal industry’s human cost remains unacceptable.

Michael Hendryx is Associate Professor in the Department of Community Medicine at West Virginia University – the heart of coal country. His research suggests that between 1997-2005 there were 10,000 ‘excess deaths’ every year that were attributed to higher poverty rates in mining areas of Appalachia and also to differences in environmental exposures and pollution from the activities in the mining industry.

He used the term “America’s Sacrifice Zone” to describe how some people in America’s coal mining communities view their own lives there. “…Some people who live there view that their lives are valued less than people who live somewhere else… that their lives are expendable so other people somewhere else can have cheap electricity.”

Clearly, not all coal miners share this demoralizing view – but I believe that if most Americans knew the true cost of coal – financial and human – they would gladly do what it took to change the status quo – including pay more for electricity.

Indeed, consumers and society are paying much more for fossil fuel than the price you see at the pump or on your electric bill. A new study from the non-partisan National Research Council highlights just how much in hidden costs we are already paying:

“Non-climate damages resulting from the use of coal in electricity generation amounted to $62 billion in 2005, or 3.2 cents per kilowatt-hour (kWh). These damages are twenty times higher per kWh than damages from electricity generated by natural gas. More than 90 percent of the damages are associated with premature human mortality.” (See summary report here: Hidden Costs of Energy - Unpriced Consequences of Energy Production and Use)

The Council considers this figure conservative because “hazardous pollutants,” including lead and mercury, were not included. Nor were “ecosystem damages, water pollution impacts, and the effects of energy on national security” – categories that would include last year’s Tennessee Valley Authority one billion gallon coal ash spill into the Tennessee River.

These costs have been known for a long time and politicians have been passing the buck for decades. One particularly timely and little-known example demonstrates the financial-human health connection that coal presents – described in the excellent report on energy subsidies from the Environmental Law Institute. In 1978, Congress created the Black Lung Disease Trust Fund (BLDTF) to pay health benefits to coal miners that contracted pneumoconiosis (black lung disease), funded through an excise tax of $1.10/ton on underground coal and $.55/ton on surface coal. The fund quickly had difficulty keeping up with payments and was given “indefinite authority to borrow” from the General Fund (i.e. tax dollars). By the end of Fiscal Year 2008, the fund owed $13 billion in principal debt and accrued interest to the Treasury. That’s 26 times as much funding that was approved for the Green Jobs Act, passed as part of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act – which will train workers for new jobs in the clean-tech economy.

With so much evidence and clarity available on the subject of coal’s disproportionately high contribution to global warming and negative impact on human health, the traditional false choices proffered by the fossil fuel industry and their lobbyists are falling apart at the seams. Anyone who opposes meaningful reductions at coal plants, supports more funding for new coal plants, coal-to-liquid fuels, ‘clean-coal,’ or repeats the same tired arguments – that ‘coal is not going anywhere anytime soon since it provides over 50% of U.S. electricity’ and a rapid transition from which would ‘cause major damage to the economy’ – either does not understand the size of the clean-tech opportunity to improve lives and livelihoods for millions of Americans or is being disingenuous.

The fact that coal’s hidden costs have been well documented but routinely ignored for political and economic practicality – is nothing new. But in this day and age there should be no safe haven for flat- earth-climate-denying-coal-money-receiving politicians, companies, and lobbyists. We have already seen their impact on the watered down American Clean Energy Security Act (ACES). And now it’s becoming increasingly apparent that no significant international climate deal will be reached before Copenhagen.

Assuming elected representatives such as Jay Rockefeller (West Virginia) are being genuine in their objections to ACES on behalf of the communities that would have the most ‘to lose’ by incurring meaningful limits on carbon – then the real problem is these representatives’ lack of creativity. States and cities in other parts of the country are packing their community colleges with as many people as possible in order to retrain workers with skills for the 21st Century. There is no reason that states like West Virginia, Wyoming, Kentucky and other major coal states cannot do the same. Indeed many groups within these regions such as Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and Coal River Wind are trying to provide an alternative path - but state and federal leadership is sorely needed.

The best way to boil it down is to ask members of Congress and coal lobbyists – “Would you encourage your own child to work in a coal mine or live in a highly polluted community if there were other options available?”

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Dexter Gauntlett is a senior research and marketing associate at Clean Edge, Inc., and board member at Green Empowerment. Email him at gauntlett@cleanedge.com (Twitter | LinkedIn | Facebook).