The 30 seconds ads for “Clean Coal” aired on the Winter Olympics program inspired me to do some Google research.

An article posted on Truthout, reports that Waxman-Markey climate bill is proposing “a whopping $60 billion in subsidies for clean-coal technologies.” The article says coal stock, as measured on Wall Street, added up only amounts to about $50 billion.

At the heart of clean coal proposals is the notion that CO2 produced by coal can be captured and safely stored. Truthout writes, “Despite the fact that this technology, dubbed Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), doesn’t actually exist in any real capacity in the United States, it has not stopped the coal lobby.”

The article reports, “In theory, in order for CCS to work, large underground geological formations would have to house this carbon dioxide. But according to a recent peer-reviewed article in the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ publication, the CCS jig is up and the technology just doesn’t seem feasible.”

The problem is that it now appears that CO2 sequestration will require huge storage spaces — much larger than originally thought — so large as to be impossible. Turthout quotes, Michael Economides, “There is no need to research this subject any longer. Let’s try something else.”

Truthout concludes, “Let’s take that a step further and add that we ought to bag the idea that coal can be clean altogether. The public investment in clean-coal technology is a fraud and will only serve as a life-support system for an industry that must be phased out completely over the course of the next two decades. Putting billions of dollars behind a dead-end theory will not bring about the energy changes our country and climate so drastically need.”

An article in McClatchy Newspapers, points out that CO2 is only a small part of the environmental concerns about coal. It says, “The (CCS) process wouldn’t reduce coal’s other pollution problems: smog, mercury, and the toxic metals such as lead and selenium in coal ash. Continuing to rely on coal also would do nothing to end the environmental damage of mining the coal itself.”

The article includes these facts:

• About 600 U.S. coal-burning power plants provide about 48 percent of the nation’s electricity.
• The average U.S. coal plant is about 33 percent efficient, meaning that about a third of the coal it burns generates electricity and the rest is lost as heat.
• 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.
• Coal-fired power plants are expensive to build, but last for decades. Some current plants date to the 1940s, and three-quarters of them were built before 1980.

Here are a couple of You-tube reports I found interesting.

From a CBS News Report, June, 2008

The “Statement of Disbursements of The House” every quarter shows what each member of the U.S. House of Representatives spends.  I looked up the record for the congressman for my district, Mike Turner, who represents Ohio’s 3rd Congressional District.  It shows in detail how Congressman Turner, the the last quarter of 2009, spent $410,318.24 of taxpayers’ money.  And shows that for the year he spent $1.31 million.  This summary, for Mr. Turner, is found on page 2430 of the “Statement of Disbursements of The House.” The report does not show what salary and other compensation Mr. Turner, himself, received.

Most of the allotted money, each quarter, is spent on personnel — $325,000 out of the $410,000.  The report shows that both Chief of Staff, Stacy Barton, and Legislative Director, Michael Heaton, both earn about $160,000 per year.

Should academically successful adolescents go to college at the end of their tenth grade? An editorial this week in the DDN urges Ohio to adopt this early college idea, but the proposal brings up a lot of questions.

The DDN says early college is, “a promising high school reform effort.” Reform seeks to bring more efficiency or more success to a system. So, to me, here is the sticking point for this early college idea: The definition of success of the system of public education is so lazily considered, there is little standard for judging ideas for system improvement.

The DDN defines success for the system in terms of student academic accomplishment as measured in test scores, academic credits and academic degrees. This definition of system success is widely accepted. In recent years, high schools have offered more and more college level work via a great proliferation of Advanced Placement classes. In general, curriculum has been pushed to be “covered” earlier and earlier in each child’s academic career. Algebra, for example, traditionally was always considered a high school level course of study. Now we see high school Algebra commonly offered to academically gifted children in the seventh grade, and earlier. We see curriculum for Kindergarten students that previously was designed for older students.

The system of public education is built on the notion of competition. Students compete with each other for academic honors and advancement, and these academic honors eventually are translated into superior earning power. One frequently cited purpose for public education is to make America, itself, more competitive in the world at large.

This definition of system purpose is seldom, if ever, challenged. But, there are many ways to think about the purpose and aim of public education and U.S. taxpayers should be wary of accepting a purpose for public education that is embraced by totalitarian or oligarchic states. I’m sure North Korea also seeks school reforms that will help prepare its citizens to more effectively compete and to more perfectly conform to the state definition of education and to more completely acquiesce to the state’s system of credentialling and rewards.

Public education in the United States has slipped away from public control. Such “reforms” as the instituting of AP classes in high schools, or the initiating of early college opportunities, are undoubtedly pushed and desired by many parents and students who also define system success in terms of competition and in terms of gaining economic advantage. Starting in preschool, the race is on for the best grades, the most recognition and most impressive credentials. The central purpose of this race is seen as securing good economic results in terms of winning the best jobs and best opportunities.

Parents demand greater advantages for their children.  But the fact that a demand is made by a big block of parents doesn’t mean that acquiescing to the demand makes for good public policy. The consensus view of education, the view that fuels the DDN editorial, is not challenged nearly enough.

We need to remember that public education is funded with public money. The rationale behind the demand that taxpayers fund public education is that public education is important to securing and advancing the general good.

If the purpose of public education is seen as an economic purpose, it’s hard to justify, in terms of the public good, pumping boat loads of money into a system that produces relatively few winners, but multitudes of losers. And the notion that the system can ever make every child a winner in this academic race, that all children can go to college and get credentials that will assure good paying jobs, is absurd.

In Kettering, at a per pupil expense approaching $12,000 each year, a K-12 education costs over $150,000. Rather than giving this money each year to an educational establishment, if, instead, this money was invested, then each Kettering child at age 18 could be given an endowment from the community of about $200,000.

I know such a thought — to simply give the money directly to the students — sounds ridiculous, but the point is, if the rationale for spending tax money on public education is all about accomplishing the purpose of providing economic opportunities to community children, then let’s get serious about the best way to use available resources to accomplish that purpose. $200,000 would make a good start in life and would have much more value and utility for most students than what they are getting from their public education.

But, the point is, the general good a community expects from spending tax money on public education is one that transcends purely economic purposes. The future of our society requires new generations to show good character, to have a commitment to community, to be prepared for and well practiced in active citizenship and leadership in a democracy, to have a commitment to personal excellence. The purpose of public education is to prepare and empower new generations of citizens.

Helping students get academic credentials at an accelerated pace is not, as the DDN says, a “promising high school reform effort.” The general good we seek in public education, that as a society we can agree is so important that it demands a system of coercive taxation for its funding, transcends academic accomplishment. The general good we seek in public education transcends competition.

Authentic high school reform will require in-depth thinking about purpose, about how the common good we seek in public education should best be defined and how that common good can best be accomplished. Authentic high school reform will be hard work and will challenge current assumptions and challenge the educational establishment.

Authentic high school reform is difficult. Sending kids to college early is easy. Advancing the notion that pushing kids out of high school early — with the excuse that they are bored or unchallenged in the present system — is the opposite of advancing an idea for “high school reform.”

See: Thinking Through Purposes and Principles Needed To Guide the Re-Design of Public Education And see, To Transform Our System Of Education, We Must Redefine The Aim Of The System