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Anna: This is from the Ringside Seat email I get from the American Prospect. The climate impact analogies are vivid and alarming: “Mother Jones follows climate-change dynamo Jason Box to Greenland’s ice sheet to learn that it’s halfway to snowcone and might go full slushie way ahead of schedule.” Are you one of Seattle’s thrift store fashionistas? The Seattle Times and local fashion blogger Dana Landon just launched a contest...

This is great: the redoubtable Joel Connelly, over at the Seattle P-I, is on the case. Take a look at his story: Seattle PR firms are doing “coal’s dirty work.” If ever an industry needed good PR, it’s coal. The industry can’t hope to promote its own coal export schemes in the Northwest so instead it buys support from local consulting and PR firms willing to do coal’s dirty work. By...

If you’re concerned about coal export proposals in the Northwest, now is the time to speak up. Government agencies are now accepting public comments about two of the five coal export plans: Port of Morrow, Oregon. A coal terminal on the Columbia River proposed by Ambre Energy, an Australian coal company, appears to be on a fast track for approval. Read more about the very serious problems with this scheme...

A few weeks ago I wrote about the astonishing and unprecedented nosedive in domestic demand for coal. That collapse has been good news for the climate and human health. But it’s been terrible, horrible, no good, very bad news for Big Coal. Just how terrible? Simply put, the coal industry is in freefall. Mining companies are shuttering operations left and right. A quick Google scan turns up recent coal mine closures in Indiana, Virginia,...

The Army Corps of Engineers has some explaining to do. They’ve just announced that, at least for the time being, Ambre Energy’s proposed coal export terminal on the Columbia River only needs to do an environmental assessment, rather than a full environmental impact statement. Which means, as Scott Learn from The Oregonian writes, that Ambre’s project “is staying on the fast track.” It’s hard not to think that the Corps is caving...

There are at present six proposals to export coal from Northwest ports. If all of these proposals are built, and if all of them operate at full capacity, the Northwest would be shipping 145 million tons of coal per year. When burned, that coal will produce roughly 262 million tons of carbon dioxide per year. It’s such a staggering figure, that it’s a little hard to grasp. So here’s some...

Cloud Peak Energy says they will ship 4 million tons of coal from British Columbia’s Westshore Terminal this year. That means Cloud Peak is almost solely responsible for current US coal exports to Asia via BC. (See here and here for US Customs figures.) Yet in a new investor report, Cloud Peak says they can’t increase coal shipments to Asia because there’s no room at BC export terminals. This is...

With all the hullabaloo surrounding a handful of ports considering coal exports, it’s easy to forget that many communities are flatly rejecting it. In fact, coal is so unattractive that a number of Northwest ports have already said no, despite aggressively pursuing new business. Recently, the Port of Tacoma, located on Puget Sound, and the Columbia River Ports of Vancouver, Kalama, and Portland have all considered—and rejected—coal export proposals. Port of...

One of the primary objections to coal export terminals, at least among people who live near them, is the spread of coal dust. Coal is typically stored in large piles at export terminals, and these piles often generate significant quantities of coal dust when it’s windy or when the coal is disturbed or moved during the loading and unloading process. As one study put it, “coal terminals by their nature are active sources...

Here we go again. Just last week, Peabody Energy, the world’s largest coal company, announced plans to export 24 million tons of coal annually from a large new shipping terminal to be built at Cherry Point near Bellingham. That’s enough coal to make Bellingham one of the biggest coal exporting sites in all of North America. And yet, it may be only half the story.Because the planned terminal will be...