Academy Award winning filmmakers Joel and Ethan Coen have directed a 30 second spot for The Reality Coalition attacking the oxymoron that is clean coal.

In reality, there is no such thing as "clean" coal in America today. Coal cannot be called 'clean' until its CO2 emissions are captured and stored safely.

Let's be clear: there are no US homes, factories, shopping centers or churches powered by coal plants that capture and store their global warming pollution.

Today, coal power plants emit carbon dioxide (CO2), the pollutant causing the climate crisis. A third of the America's carbon pollution now comes from about 600 coal-fired power plants. And of the more than 70 proposed new coal power plants, barely a handful have plans to capture and store their CO2 emissions. If these dirty plants are allowed to be built, this will mean an additional 200 million tons of global warming pollution will be emitted in America each year. Until coal power plants no longer release CO2 to the atmosphere, coal will remain a major contributor to the climate crisis.

More on the new spot from Variety.

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"Those who have fantasized that oil shale is a panacea for America's energy needs have been living in a fantasy land." - Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar

There is more evidence today that we indeed have begun to reverse the gross malfeasance of the Bush Administration in their management of Federal lands and the nation's natural resources. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar canceled oil shale development leases on Federal lands in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming and announced that the Interior Department would first study the water, power and land-use issues surrounding the development oil shale. This is the third time since taking office that the Obama Administration has frozen late-term Bush decisions that sought to spur domestic energy development over objections from environmentalists.

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Americans For Prosperity (AFP) has released this 30 second spot claiming that global warming and green energy is a hoax. The spot quotes John Coleman, founder of the Weather Channel. Mr. Coleman, who is no longer associated with the Weather Channel, launched a crusade last year to expose "the fraud of global warming." AFP self-promotes as being "committed to educating citizens about economic policy and mobilizing those citizens as advocates in the public policy process." It purports to be an grassroots organization that "engage citizens in the name of limited government and free markets on the local, state and federal levels."

According to SourceWatch, AFP was established "in late 2003 as a successor to Citizens for a Sound Economy Foundation following an internal rift between Citizens for a Sound Economy and its affiliated foundation." AFP was also formally affiliated with the Independent Women's Forum which was founded by Rosalie Gaull (Ricky) Silberman in 1992 as a vehicle to attack Hillary Rodham Clinton and other "secular feminists."

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On August 27, 1859 Colonel Edwin Drake drilled the first successful oil well in Titusville, Pennsylvania and ushered in the Age of Oil. The Age of Oil will not endure. Already just 150 years into it, we are seeing the endline but there is little question that oil has remade our world. That magical string of hydrocarbons allows us to live on this planet in numbers otherwise not possible. If not for oil, at least 40% of us would not be here. We literally eat oil for without we could not produce the quantity of food that enables our numbers of now near seven billion. Indeed, the major phenomenon of the modern era are wholly attributable to oil. The Green Revolution, globalization, the advent of plastics are all ultimately tied to our mastery of oil's magic. Our transportation infrastructure is largely based on a hydrocarbon economy. There is no question that solving our energy riddle is one of the paramount questions for the upcoming century.

Thus it is striking that the President last night in Williamsburg made the following comment:

This plan will begin to end the tyranny of oil in our time. It doubles our capacity to generate alternative sources of energy like wind, solar, and biofuels in three years.

It's an interesting and perhaps odd phrase, the tyranny of oil, but those involved in the study of peak oil or in the transition towns movement that phrase has real meaning and it is music to our ears. It signifies that President is aware of the daunting challenge to wean a planet off a diminishing resource before our world literally slides off a cliff. For me personally as someone who was less than enthused with candidate Obama, that phrase along with his comment back in Toledo to Joe the Plumber about "share the wealth" are the most instructive and insightful into the President's thinking and core beliefs. If President Obama addresses the "tyranny of oil" and moves to address the growing income inequality in this country then he truly is the one that I have been awaiting.

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