The Phoenix Sun

Photo by Nick Humphries, via Flickr Creative Commons

The AP’s Dina Cappiello has an excellent piece out today on the impact of a controversial new EPA rule on air pollution. Here’s her lede:

Together, those plants — some of the oldest and dirtiest in the country — produce enough electricity for more than 22 million households, the AP survey found. But their demise probably won’t cause homes to go dark.

Photo by Nick Humphries, via Flickr Creative Commons

Democratic Congressmen Henry Waxman (CA) and Bobby Rush (IL) today called on Republican committee chairs to hold hearings on the full economic costs of coal-fired power plants. The key word here is, of course, full.

Big Coal and its supporters in Congress often use the club of “expensive energy” to beat up on renewable sources such as solar power and wind. But, as Waxman and Rush state in their request letter to Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-MI), a new study “finds that the economic costs of air pollution from coal-fired … power plants outweigh the economic value these sources add to the economy.” The letter was also addressed to the chairman of the Subcommittee on Energy and Power, Ed Whitfield (R-KY).

The study, Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy, determined that economic damages caused by coal-fired power plants outweighed benefits by up to 5.6 times.

Coal-fired electrical generation only seems cheap because most of the costs don’t appear on the power bill. Instead, the full cost of coal is paid by ordinary Americans in increased health care and shortened life spans, by businesses in lost work days due to respiratory and heart-related illnesses, and by the agriculture industry in lower crop yields due to climate change.

The new study appears in the latest issue of the American Economic Review, and was co-authored by economists at Middlebury College and Yale University.

For more on the healthcare costs of coal-fired power plants, see the excellent 2010 study, The Toll From Coal, published by the Clean Air Task Force.

The True Cost of Coal

Soweto, South Africa

“Some cities were founded on a river, some around a church,” says our tour guide, Pumla, as our bus leaves Johannesburg, South Africa, heading toward Soweto, the sprawling shantytown where she lives. “Johannesburg was founded on greed.”

In our three days together on and off the bus, it’s the only time bitterness creeps into her voice, and even now, Pumla says it far more mildly than I would have expected, given this country’s history of brutal White supremacy that ended just 17 years ago.

I’m traveling with a group of two dozen American secondary school teachers, on the Toyota International Teacher Program. The auto maker has been funding these trips for thirteen years, always with an environmental theme. This is the first time the destination has been on the African continent. While environmental issues can rarely be understood taken out of their social and political context, that’s particularly true in the case of South Africa. The first two days (out of 17) are devoted entirely to the history of Black struggle against White domination and exploitation.

Johannesburg was a gold rush city, born in the 1800s. To ensure cheap labor, the British rulers of the time imposed a general tax, while prohibiting blacks from owning land sufficient to pay the tax. The only work available was in the mines.

Today, Jo’burg, as the city is informally known, is South Africa’s financial and business hub. And, while there is now a Black middle class in the city, most Blacks still live in the nearby township of Soweto.

Soweto has changed since the racist “apartheid” government was ousted and a Black man, Nelson Madela, was elected president. But some changes are agonizingly slow. For example, most residents of Soweto live in poverty and a meaningful education is still out of reach for most of the children here. The official unemployment rate is 23 percent – but if you include those involved in the informal economy, that rate goes up to 43 percent.

Social studies teacher Zach Taylor at the Apartheid Museum.

Yesterday, Pumla led us through the Apartheid Museum in Jo’burg, which documents – to devastating effect – the history of struggle against a bureaucratic system of organized oppression. A couple of teachers liken it to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and when we gather that evening to talk about the day, the room is filled with sobs.

Today, we visit several historically important sites in Soweto, including the Hector Pieterson Memorial and Museum, named for the 12-year-old boy who was shot to death during a peaceful protest march on June 16, 1976. It was the spark for what became known as the Soweto Uprising. From a window in the museum, two cooling towers from an old coal-fired power plant are visible. They’re located in Soweto, but until recently, the power lines ran just one way – toward Jo’burgh.

We pass close by the towers on the way back to our hotel. The giant brick structures are brightly painted with post-apartheid murals of Black musicians, artist and leaders.

Coal plant cooling towers, Soweto.

“There used to be a saying,” Pumla tells us over the bus’s PA system. “We used to say that the towers bring electricity to Whites and pollution to Blacks.”

And that is one measure of change since the end of apartheid. Today, Soweto receives electricity – just as Jo’burg does. Only residents of Soweto, however, must continue breathing the contaminated air.

[To be continued.]