Are we still fanatical?

Welcome to the 21st century. (Ok, so I'm 10 years late or something.)

2000: October 11th, in Inez, KY. Where residents arise to over 300 MILLION gallons of coal sludge in their tiny town. Why? because this is America, and we like to burn coal for energy. For over 200 years! Sorry Inez, but in New York City, our lights are shining bright. The EPA calls this "one of the worst environmental disasters ever in the southeastern United States".

2004: December 26th, in the Indian Ocean. Theres an earthquake ranging from 9.1 to 9.3 on the Richter scale. This brings a tsunami over 32 ft. high to the coast of indonesia.

2005: August 29th, New Orleans, LA residents are greeted be Katrina, a formerly catagory 5 hurricane. Over 80% of the city is flooded. Mississippi's beachfront towns were 90% flooded. Katrina is refered to as the costliest hurricane, and one of the five deadliest.

2006: July  17th, once again in the Indian ocean, off the southwest coast of Java, Indonesia. Theres a 7.7 magnitude earthquake, causing a nearly 10 ft. tsunami, taking at least 668 lives.

2008: Begining on September 1st, Hurricane Ike is formed. Reaching category 4 status at various points in its journey,  finally making landfall over Galveston, Texas on September 13th as a strong category 2, with a category 5 like storm surge. Ike moved all the way up through the midwest on into canada in tropical depression, and extratropical status before finally exiting around the Labrador Sea. This was ranked the 3rd costliest hurricane, and brought hurricane like winds and rains to places that knew nothing of such things.

It's barely December 22nd in Roane county, TN. The coal slurry impoundment at the TVA fossil plant has a damn rupture into the Emory river. Over 1 billion gallons of coal fly ash slurry goes rushing through the Emory and Clinch rivers. Surrounding property was covered in as much as 6 ft. of sludge. This spill was more than three times the size of the 2000 martin county spill. They continue to battle clean up efforts to this day.

2009: January 9th, another TVA plant, this time in northeast AL, has a spill. TVA did not deny that the material entered the creek, but figures were not disclosed as they claimed to have "contained" it.

January 25th, Areas of Oklahoma, Arkansas, Missouri, Illinois, Indiana, West Virginia, and Kentucky are hit with an ice storm that lasted up to 5 days in some places. As much as 2.5 inches of ice can be found on trees and power lines. Over 2 million people lost power, over 500,000 in Kentucky alone, 100,000 of those without power for over a week.

August 4th, Louisville, KY and southern IN are hit with a serious flash flood.

September 30th, Just off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia theres a 7.6magnitude earthquake. Killing at least 1,115, destroying 135,000 houses.

2010: January 12th, there's a 7.0 magnitude earthquake off the coast of Leogane, and Port-au-Prince, Haiti. 6th deadliest earthquake in history, killing an estimated 230,000 people. Approximately 1,000,000 people were left without homes, and many many more were severly injured. In addition to homes and business' that were destroyed. The Red Cross estimates that as many as 3,000,000 people were effected by the quake.

March 5th, once again off the Sumatra coast in Indonesia, they experience a 6.8 magnitude earthquake. to be followed by a 7.8 magnitude quake on April 6th.

April 3rd, A large coal carrying ship runs aground off the coast of Australia damaging and leaking oil into prts of the incurredibly sensitive Great Barrier Reef.

April 20th, an oil drilling rig off the coast of LA explodes causing a large fire and massive oil spill that is on going to this day, currently releasing at least 210,000 gallons of crude oil a day.

May 1st and 2nd Excessive rainfall causes the cumberland river to overflow leading to flooding in KY, MS, and most affected, TN. As of May 2nd, there are currently 29 confirmed dead, but this too is "current", so those figures could, and probably will, change.

All of this makes me absolutely sick!
But I'm just an "environmentalist hippy", what do I know?

I really hope that theres something here for my children, when they're older.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_County_Sludge_Spill
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2004_Indian_Ocean_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/July_2006_Java_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Ike
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingston_Fossil_Plant_coal_fly_ash_slurry_spill
http://www.epa.gov/region4/kingston/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/01/09/second-tva-dam-breaks-at_n_156605.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/January_2009_Central_Plains_and_Midwest_ice_storm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Kentuckiana_Flash_Flood
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Sumatra_earthquakes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Haiti_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_2010_Sumatra_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_2010_Sumatra_earthquake
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Shen_Neng_1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_drilling_rig_explosion
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gIXWYBTpLtSayJtg41LKXpxSxVPAD9FGLT3G0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2010_Tennessee_floods

electric cars are all the rage.

my family just invested in the 2010 honda insight for the sake of being "greener". (honestly, we really just want to save money. saving the earth is always a perk though.)

now im aware of the...not so goodness that is hybrid cars, batteries are a yucky yucky thing, as with coal, the metals that make up said batteries must be mined, exposing the environment to all kinds of things that it wasnt meant to be exposed to, in addition to the people employed to mine said metals. then comes the disposal, which is inevitable at some point in time.
the car we traded in wasnt even old, nor was it anything remotely close to a "gas guzzler". but yet, this felt like a good idea, despite my feelings of feeling somewhat selfish.

so where am i going with this? well, weve (americans, and the world) have been going on and on about electric vehicles (ev's) for years and years now. currenty there tons of talk about "plug in hybrids" as well as ev's. i have to ask myself, are these really a better option than the gasoline powered vehicles currently on the market?
and my educated answer is no.
gasoline is dirty, thats no secret. while im sure i could expose a few secrets (as well as enlighten myself a little) on petroleum production, im going to focus solely on the environmental cost after use.
i dont have the energy this evening to find and share statistics, but its a fact that coal fired power plants emit MANY more emissions than gasoline powered cars for the same amount of energy. (i hope that makes sense) smokestack to exhaust pipe, coal is far worse. this alone tells me that petroleum is the more conscious option.

i did a brief search for this topic, to see what others had to say. and it makes me sad to see that the most talked about issue is cost. because coal (and the power it generates) is so much cheaper than petroleum, they expect less than a us dollars worth of energy to equate to a gallon of gasoline. if price represented environmental impact than clearly, that would be the better option. but it doesnt. yes, gasoline is expensive, and it seems like the cost only rises. yes, at the rate of consumption its likely that not so distant future generations will only read about petroleum in history books. but lets face it, coal is a NONrenewable resource as well (as are our mountains). until we come up with a better source for electricity, i will scoff at the thought of production ev's.