There's more problems with coal than simply making it 'clean'

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a good, yet heartbreaking editorial in The Washington Post on the continuing irresponsible exploitation of a national treasure. I hope that President Obama is reading the papers thoroughly this morning.

Here's a snip:

The coal industry's promise to restore the desolate wastelands is a cruel joke, and the industry's fallback position, that the flattened landscapes will provide space for economic development, is the weak punchline. America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains -- with their impoverished and alienated population -- are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.