Michael Bloomberg writes:
The Sierra Club, Bloomberg Philanthropies and its partners have reached a big milestone in our campaign to move the United States beyond coal. With the announced retirement of the Brayton Point Power Station in Somerset, Massachusetts, 150 coal plants, or more than 60,000 megawatts, have either already closed or are on schedule to close. During the last two years, action by hundreds of individual communities, in partnership with the Sierra Club and Bloomberg Philanthropies, has led us to this key marker—one plant at a time.
Coal is the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, accounting for about 40 percent of total U.S. emissions. Retiring much of our existing coal fleet is our best opportunity to lower carbon pollution in the United States. Already, this shift away from coal has helped drive 2012 carbon dioxide emissions in the United States to their lowest level in two decades.
The shift is also saving lives. Pollution from coal kills 13,000 Americans every year and threatens our air, water and climate. According to the Clean Air Task Force, shutting these 150 plants will save 4,100 lives, prevent 6,200 heart attacks and prevent 66,300 asthma attacks each year. This means Americans will avoid $1.9 billion in medical costs.
We have a president who has exactly the same skill-sets.
Liberals are not dissuaded from telling lies which further their cause. It’s not Truth they are seeking; it’s ideological for them. Remember when Bloomie was interviewed on TV about assault weapons and claimed that the AR-15 was an automatic weapon. When corrected that it was not, he simply dismissed the difference in weapons as unimportant. For the Left, all guns are automatic. That’s why guys like Bloomie have armed bodyguards.
In addition to the deaths that environmental pseudo-science has contributed to, which are clearly greater than the deaths caused by pollution if any are directly caused by pollution, there’s the crime of stifling people in Third World squalor. The Third World cities especially — the ones those idyllic pastoral villagers flock to for hope of work — are woeful. The wretched intersection of tyranny, socialism and environmentalism has been dreadful for those most in need of opportunity. Handouts are counterproductive; economic growth is the cure for poverty.
Come to think of it, that’s true for First World countries too, if we would remember it.
I agree that the claim of 13000 coal pollution deaths per year is ridiculous, but that is also the lower range of the EPA estimate. The EPA is just as ridiculous as Bloomberg
The irony of it all. The Margaret Sangter Eugenics Wing of the Environmental movement murder 100 million third world inhabitants 80% children under the age of 5 and pregnant women with their successful banning of DDT in 1972. Currently there are 3 million cases per year 1 million of which are fatal. I will posit that the Modern Environmental Movement is guilty of crimes against Humanity.
All of the people yapping about coal deaths are ignorant of the flipside. They ask how many people die from coal. They never backup and ask, “how many people didn’t die because they were able to focus on something other than keeping their homes warm”. It isn’t that big a leap to say that coal has saved more lives than any other resource on the planet.
One miner with a pickaxe can harvest enough coal from a face in a day to keep a town warm. In order to harvest that heat in the home you needed the really advanced technology of a hearth. There were negative consequences of just burning coal in the hearth, but that was offset by having extra time to pursue other ideas.
Energy density..
It looks like the sound science of coal power pollution fatalities is sourced from a dart board
Bloomberg: 13,000
Clean Air Task Force (2010): 13,200-24,000 per year http://www.catf.us/resources/publications/files/The_Toll_from_Coal.pdf
Earth Policy Institute (2004): 25,100 per year
http://www.earth-policy.org/plan_b_updates/2004/update42
Treehugger (2010): 13,200-24,000 (same source as CATF?) http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/coal-pollution-will-kill-13200-americans-this-year-cost-100-billion-in-additional-health-care-bills.html
IEEE Spectrum (2009) “tens of thousands” http://spectrum.ieee.org/energywise/energy/renewables/coal-pollution-fatalities
Sourcewatch 24,000/year http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/Air_pollution_from_coal-fired_power_plants
USEPA from Congressional Research Service (2011) 13,000-36,000 http://www.lawandenvironment.com/uploads/file/CRS-EPA.pdf
That doesn’t count the international death rate estimates, e.g, 100,000/year in India.
The number of people supposedly killed each year by coal plants seem to vary from scare to scare. Is it getting better or worse with coal plant closures? I mean, if we are closing these nasty old coal plants, the number of deaths ought to be decreasing. I’m also sure that Bloomberg, the Sierra Club and the other environmental twits are also eliminating electricity from coal plants in their daily lives on top of decreasing their electrical use to save the planet.
Bloomers should spend his time wearing a Warden’s helmet and running around yelling “Douse that light!”.
Big cities suck up sooo much power!
Michael Bloomberg appears to be an idiot. How he even gets his pants on frontwards is beginning to stump me. I’m even more stumped at how someone with so little understanding of economics, science or sociology has managed to build a fortune. Even if he started with a fortune, he has to have done something right in business, but maybe it was only to pick smart people and let them do the heavy lifting.