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Impact on the global economy outside of the United States
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Coal’s Impact
Coal is considered a fossil fuel that traces back to prehistoric times. Coal is formed from the remains of vegetation life that grew over 400 million years ago. Coal is a very abundant natural resource for the United States. Over 90 percent of the coal that is consumed in the United States is used to generate electricity. Coal has an important role in energy in the United States because of our increasing dependence on this natural element. Coal’s role in the United States economy is either positive or negative depending on whose view you take political and socially. The question we must ask ourselves and society is the financial gains that can be made by coal production worth the impact on our health and environment.
There are two methods to remove coal from the ground: surface mining and deep surface mining. The United States Department of Environmental Protection defines surface mine “the removal of soil, sub-soil, and other strata and then extracting a mineral deposit found fairly close to the earth’s surface”. Surface mining is removing the mountain top to expose the coal seams and then disposing of what you do not want from the mountain top to other areas. Mountain top removal is a very profitable procedure. The process of mountain top removal can be performed quickly and is very economical for the companies who own the land. According to the United Stated Department of Environmental Protection the following steps are involved in surface mining:
• Layers of rock and dirt above the coal (called overburden) are removed. • The upper seams of coal are removed with spoils place in an adjacent valley. • The draglines excavate lower layers of coal and spoils place in spoil piles. • Regarding begins as coal exca...
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... adopted in the 1980s devised to ensure competition, more than 80 percent of sales in the past 20 years had received only one bid. The report said the process for computing the value of the leases was faulty, costing the government millions. At the current rate of coal leasing, the inspector general found, every penny-a-ton undervaluation costs taxpayers $3 million”(Broder 2013).
The scandal involving the leases is additional support for the political power that the coal industry has.
Political or Social
The issues discussed on the safety of coal production on the health of the United States citizens and the environment is enormous. The fact that over 90% of coal usage is to generate electricity and at a cheaper cost . Coal is like a four letter word depending on your political and social views. U.S. DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIORBUREAU OF LAND MANAGEMENT
Wyoming
Mountain Top Removal is an American tragedy, the process in which mining companies remove forests and topsoil then explode the mountain apart level by level to get to coal layer. It is estimated that the explosives are equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb. A lot of the mining waste is discarded into valleys and streams; the water runoff is high in silt, ion, and sulfur compounds, which in turn pollute water downstream. Even with chemical treatments, vegetation has a hard time growing on the infertile and highly acidic soil. Mountain top removal occurs in eastern Kentucky, southern West Virginia, southwest Virginia, and east Tennessee. Virtually 1.2 million acres of land has been surface mined and more than 500 mountains have been ruined by mountaintop removal mining.
CF&I owned the land and the mines where the coal was supplied from, the majority of the workers that they h...
5). The high mortality rates are related to the environmental exposures of the coal mining along with other factors such as smoking, poverty, education, age, race and sex. “Higher lung cancer incidence and mortality in the Kentucky Appalachia is thought to result from higher smoking rates and correlates of poor socioeconomic conditions which limits the population access to health care” (Hendryx, O'Donnell, & Horn, 2008, p. 2). The population residing in coal mining areas, are exposed to contaminated water and air from the coal mining and there is a concern for respiratory illnesses related to the pollutants. The fumes or toxin released from the coal mine, this places the individual at a risk for respiratory issues such as emphysema, black lung, brown lung and
Coal in the 1930’s: The First Lame Duck? European Union. 2002. Great Sutton Street, London. .
It is made up of sedimentary and organic rock which is composed mainly of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. Coal is straight from the ground, which also gives many men and women jobs as well as risking their lives working on the unknown underground. There are multiple ways to convert coal into energy we use in an everyday basis. The first step is the first stage of turning coal into electricity, grinding the coal into fine powder and so forth. There are pros that come from the underground such as creating over four hundred thousand volts. As of today they are growing in large economies. They say, "the cheaper the better". In this case, using coal, "the cheaper it is, the less your guaranteed". More than 1.1 billion tons are being made as of 2007. An estimated five billion people work in China 's coal mining industry. As many as 20,000 miners die in accidents each year. Yes, they do give plenty of people the opportunity of some sort of work with good pay, but it has its downfall as well such as deaths, that are pretty unexplainable. The number one con that coal causes, has to be pollution. Pollution can start from anything like throwing a water bottle after a long practice, or chemically, like a cigarette you throw out of your car. Pollution is already exposed by the refineries, factories and diesel vehicles. Pollution is the start of what changes the color and texture of our land and ocean. The coal companies use water to create the steam in the boiler taking out water from a lake, after they are finished with the water from the boiler some toxins get in the water and released into our oceans and seas. Plus, the burning of coal which is called ash, that we humans inhale even though we might not see it. Think of it as a dark, smoky layer in the bubble called an atmosphere, and we are stuck standing in the middle. Some coal mining companies are getting a bargain on federal land and skirting export royalties,
Clean Coal Technologies (CCTs) are defined by the WCI as 'technologies designed to enhance both the efficiency and the environmental acceptability of coal extraction, preparation and use' . These technologies reduce emissions, reduce waste, and increase the amount of energy gained from each ton of coal. There are a wide variety of technologies that are available to improve our coal performance. This can be done by: Enhancing of existing options, Deploying of Advanced Technologies, Exploiting Synergies with Renewables, and Development and Commercialization of Next Generation Technologies (“Coal”). Some environmental problems that they will be trying to address are: Particulate matter, trace elements and SOX and NOX, and mercury.
Coal has a very negative impact on the environment, one of the main impacts on the environment is the actual process of extracting the coal from the ground. The two ways that coal is mined, underground and surface, both have different effects on the environment. The first way that coal is mined is by digging tunnels and creating mineshafts underground and then removing the coal from th...
In her book Coal A Human History, Barbara Freese states "The mundane mineral that built our global economyand even today powers our electrical plantshas also caused death, disease, and environmental destruction" (front flap) Today, coal provides for more than 55% of the electricity generated in the U.S. (Cullen, Robert Vol.272) Coal miners have had one of the most dangerous jobs in history before government regulation. Many miners had to work underground for 10 + hours a day and 6 days a week(Cobb, James "Coal") The number of deaths per year is the equivalent of a Titanic going down in the nation's coal fields each year (Turkington, Carol) According to James Cobb from the World Book Online Reference Center mine safety involves four main types of problems including accidents involving machinery, roof and rib failures, accumulations of gases and concentrations of coal dust.
The use of fossil fuels on a large scale, specifically coal, began with the Industrial Revolution in England. Industries/corporations first used coal as a main source of energy to fuel their factories, and it became even more popular when railroads started. According to the United States Energy Department, "...by the early 20th century coal had become the major fuel in the United States, accounting for nearly 75% of the nation's energy requirements." Soon after, newer and cheaper fossil fuels, such as oil and natural gas, were high in demand. Energy Supplies, Sustainability, and Costs, by Sandra Alters, states oil was used as the main source of fuel to heat homes and offices, and gas powered the growing number of cars (57). "Oil shoved aside coal as the world's primary fuel, just as coal had replaced wood", says Tom Mast in Over a Barrel: A Simple Guide to the Oil Shortage (15). Most Americans were not concerned wit...
Refining coal isn’t really as hard as you would think… Moisture and other pollutants have to be removed first from some of the lower-classed coals such as ‘lignite’ and ‘sub-bituminous’, which is condoned by washing all of the coal to get all of the superficial impurities (dirt, mud and sulphur etc.) off of the coal. When refining coal, there is usually two main ways, either by burning the pulverized coal and blasting it with strong, pressurized steam and then scrubbing it or through another method known as ‘fluidized bed combustion’. Fluidized bed combustion is the process in which “limestone and powdered coal are forcefully blown on the bed at a very high temperature where as they burn, the limestone bonds with the sulphur that emanates from coal”. (Refining Coal)
According to the World Coal Association, more than 6,185 million tons of hard coal was mined from coal mines around the world as of 2012. Coal mines use surface mining for coal deposits buried less than 200 feet underground. In this type of mining, giant machines remove top-soil and layers of rock to expose large beds of coal. After coal extraction, the topsoil is replaced so that the area can be reused for croplands, wildlife habitats, recreation or offices. Underground mining is another method of coal extraction that involves extracting coal that is buried several hundred feet below the surface. In underground mining, miners use elevators to travel deep into line shafts where they use machines that dig out the coal.
Burning and mining coal for fuel is harmful to the environment but because how cheap and easy it is to find many people are unwilling to give it up as a fuel source. One of the problems with coal is that they are limited and are non-renewable so once it has been used we won’t be able to use it again.
Coal mining is not just dangerous to the environment but also a big life and health risk to the workers themselves. Coal miners live the risk of getting trapped in the coal mines if something goes wrong as in an explosive goes off and covers the way out. Since coal mines are deep into mountain sides the possibility of getting the workers out is very low because it is very hard to reach them. In a mine in Mexico, 65 miners got trapped and died due to an explosion that went wrong. There are approximately 6,000 deaths every year in the mines of china. They are the ones that cause the most deaths.
These fuels include coal, oil products such as gasoline, and natural gas. Use of these fuels has a number of harmful health and environmental effects. According to the World Health Organization, outdoor air pollution, most of it from burning fossil fuels, especially coal kills at least 800,000 people each year and causes health problems for tens of millions of others. Technology is available to reduce such air pollution, but using it is costly and results in higher fuel
Fuels like coal, and oil that once were a fine innovation in creating energy are now rapidly deleting and one day will be gone forever; energy that won’t last is often referred to as non-renewable energy. Besides being set up to fail and become inefficient in the future, fossil fuel energy is not clean to use and poses several environmental complications. Coal, for instance is “the dirtiest of all fossil fuels. Coal combustion not only produces sulfur oxides and nitrogen oxides that contribute to acid rain and snow, it generates millions of tons of particulates that cause asthma and other respiratory diseases.” As with all usage of fossil fuels, it creates enormous amounts of carbon dioxide, which contributes to greenhouse gas. Not only are fossil fuels dirty, they also pose as a security risk and unforgiving on the American wallet. (Saini)