Video: The Story of Coal

As we put together our Energy Issue, I've been pouring through reams (gigabytes?) of information about residential energy use and electricity supply and demand and so on. A pithy summary would probably go something like: American electricity use is ridiculously dependent on coal.

Alas, too few people think about coal when they flip on light switches or set their DVRs. This little video (which I found thanks to Michael Graham Richard at Treehugger) does a bang-up job of tracking electricity from the home to the coal-fired power plants, and showing the outrageous scale of coal's impacts, on the environment and public health. Check it out:

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[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lC1lrajJExo

Yes, it's technically propaganda for a home solar energy systems company, SunRun, and, yes, the narrator's voice gets a bit monotonous. But the facts are sound and it's one of the best coal primers I've ever seen.