COAL VS. CLEAN ENERGY

摘要

King coal's throne is starting to teeter. The industry has been battered by the disaster at Massey Energy's Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, which killed 29 miners. Less acknowledged are the 10,000 mine workers who have died from black lung disease in the past decade, or the 10,000 people who die every year, according to the National Academies of Science, from coal-fired-power-plant pollution. Across the country, the Sierra Club's Beyond Coal campaign and other groups have been defeating proposals for new coal-fired plants, fighting mountaintop-removal mines, and pushing states to require utilities to provide a specified percentage of their electricity from renewable sources like wind and solar by a certain date-what's known as a "renewable-energy standard."