Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are talking more about "clean coal" and less about global warming as they woo voters in West Virginia and Kentucky -- two states that sit at the heart of the nation's coal economy.In a bid to draw voters ahead of Democratic primaries in West Virginia on Tuesday and Kentucky on May 20, both candidates are playing up the ascendant role of commercially untested and so far economically nonviable ways of converting America's plentiful coal supplies into electricity without spewing massive quantities of heat-trapping greenhouse gases. "We need some big investments right now in figuring out how to capture and store carbon dioxide from coal," Clinton told a rally in the rural town of Clear Fork on Monday.
To get there, she took a windy road through the Appalachian Mountains that passed at least four big coal mines cut into the mountainside.
Not to be outdone, Obama's campaign has distributed flyers in Kentucky stating that "Barack Obama believes in clean Kentucky coal." The flyers show a picture of giant barges carrying coal down the Ohio River.
Coal-fired power plants generate about half of U.S. electricity supplies, and account for about 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions -- the biggest single industrial source.
Clinton has a plan to require U.S. industry to cut carbon dioxide emissions by 80 percent below 1990 levels by 2050, but she hasn't brought that up in numerous appearances in West Virginia and Kentucky in recent days. But America has 250 years worth of coal, and will likely remain the backbone of its power generation system for decades. "I know how important coal is to West Virginia," Clinton said last week in the state's capitol rotunda in Charleston. "Coal is not going anywhere for the foreseeable future."