Coal not Candles
By Viv Forbes, Chairman,
The Carbon Sense Coalition
today claimed that coal not candles should be the symbol of Earth Hour.
It was coal that produced
clean electric power which cleared the smog produced by dirty combustion and
open fires in big cities like London and Pittsburgh.
Much of the third world
still suffers choking fumes and smog because they do not have clean electric
power and burn wood, cardboard, unwashed coal, rubber and cow dung for home
heat.
It was coal that saved the
forests being felled to fuel the first steam engines and produce charcoal for
the first iron smelters.
It was coal that powered
the light bulbs and saved the whales being slaughtered for whale oil lamps.
It was coal that produced
the steel that replaced shingles on the roof, timber props in the mines, wooden
fence posts on the farms and the bark on the old bark hut.
In Australia today, coal
provides at least 75% of our lighting, cooking, heating, refrigeration, rail
transport and steel. Without it, we would be back in the dark days of candles,
wood stoves, chip heaters, open fires, smoky cities, hills bare of trees and
streets knee deep in horse manure.
Coal is fossil sunshine as
clean as the green plants it came from, and less damaging to the environment
than its green energy alternatives.
Earth Hour candles are
green tokenism for rich applause-seekers and nostalgic dreamers.
We should spend Earth Hour
saluting the real people who produce the coal on which most people on earth
depend.
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