Reply #25: Coal industry keep blue collar employed is the story

[abqmufc]

I don't disagree with you. Living in NM I live very close to some the dirtiest coal fired EGUs in the nation. All that power leaves NM (and Navajo Nation) and goes to L.A. and Vegas. It is a shame, and the solution of carbon capture is disgusting. The said fact is CCS is moving forward, I sat on those federal decision making panels a few years ago. Univ. of Illinois has most research grants on this and thus you see the Prez backing this...CCS means IL can mine coal again (high sulfur content). It is sad for me to see the blueprints go from something I saw on a powerpoint 3 - 4 years ago to actual pilot projects. And I won't even start my rant with Peabody Coal and the Black Mesa mine (largest open pit coal mine in the world) found on the HPL land between Navajo and Hopi lands.

Again I agree with you, but I will argue we do have deaths from the nuclear industry annually. A book called "If You Poison Us: Uranium and Native Americans" talks about the longterm health (and death) found in NM and AZ, I used it as a major source for my thesis work on the subject matter. While people have not necessarily died directly from nuclear power, there are entire clusters of men and women dead in places like Laguna Pueblo, Acoma Pueblo, and Nez Perce Reservation, all from cancer that is directly related to exposure.

Nuclear is a hot issue in the Southwest (along with all negative, fossil fuel extraction) b/c the mines are starting to open up after being shut down for 25 years. The mills are opening up. Most people don't hear about this, but Bruce Babbitt's uranium claims are about to be used...they are on the border of the Grand Canyon National Park! While Sec of DOI Babbitt did a lot to support his personal interest in mining rights and grazing rights. In short, DOI allowed him to create a nice retirement in N, AZ. Despite the Navajo Nation and Acoma Pueblo having banned uranium mining and milling they are left powerless for two reasons. One, federal government supremacy of law, as the past two Presidents have said, "energy is a national security issue", b/c of that the government can forgo all public comment, environmental laws, and local (state, county, Tribal) laws which prohibit mining. Besides the federal government having the framework to do what ever they want to with respect to "securing our nation's energy needs", we have the issue of checker board reservations. When the government realized what resources existed on reservation lands, they decided communial landownership was not acceptable. This is a reason for the Dawes Act not discussed on Wikipeida or in general American hisotry. The Dawes Act allowed non-tribal people and industry the ability to buy and own land on Tribal reservations. The result for the Nez Perce Tribe is 90% of their reservation is now owned by non-tribal members (b/c it was good farming land) and for Navajo Nation it is the land where the oil, gas, coal, and uranium is mined despite the Tribal governments and its peoples' protest.

Wave, wind, solar, and possibly geothermal are the only options.