So the Rudd government budget has maintained John Howard’s pledge to give $500 million of your tax dollars to develop initiatives for ‘clean coal’. Even though the US Department of Energy has just pulled out of its $1.8 billion ‘clean coal’ demonstration project citing “ballooning”
costs, we’re going to bravely go where others have already given up. 

Instead of chasing the myth of CO2 sequestration that many scientists agree is neither feasible nor timely with respect to global warming, we could use that money to wean state governments off their coal royalties.

Someone’s got to help them with their addiction!  Then they might be able to make really clean choices for their people, their environment and their planet.
 

Coal isn’t clean and it never will be. The moment it is ripped from under ground it’s the shiny, dark heart of a dirty, filthy business.

Coal extraction poisons our water supplies and pollutes our land and air with cancer-causing chemicals, noxious sulphides, lung-clogging dusts and toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury and arsenic. Children are the most affected. What price their health?

 
              We’re already in a hole with coal, surely it’s time to stop digging.