I agree that clean coal is an oxymoron, but all the candidates have it in their repertoire.

The supporters of each respective candidate should be all up in their grills about this "clean coal" BS.

I personally am more disappointed in Obama, because I expected more of him on this issue. He's supposed to be the candidate of the people. Why is he pandering to this special interest?

with both your strategy and your tactics here.

hailing from florida (where everyone is basically an environmentalist -- think nat reid), i've long followed environmental issues and use it as a barometer for picking candidates.  and i am comfortable with obama's position on clean coal.

i don't disagree with the current science here, but we deal with some pretty substantial realities: 1.) we are high energy consumers, and that seems unlikely to change; 2.) renewables are a long way off from carrying even a quarter of our power supply (10% seems like a laudable goal atm); and 3.) none of our actual energy supplies (coal, oil, gas and nuclear) are that clean.

as environmentalists, we need to move from the reaganesque "just say no" position to something that recognizes that the environment should be one of the factors considered in public policies.  iow, we demand a seat at the table (with national security and economic concerns), not a veto.  voters shouldn't see environmental issues as jobs vs {fish, birds, wolves etc}; i'd prefer a debate where we are asking how we can make all jobs have less of an impact on our environment so that it is a shared sacrifice.

clean coal is a hope, a promise (hopefully) not a fact.  instead of rejecting it out of hand, as you seem wont to do, a better position (it seems to me) would be to mobilize to see that it lives up to its promise.  right now, it seems the term is more marketing technique than description.  we should speak out against false advertising, but we shouldn't be so quick to condemn the possibility just because we are skeptical (because we should be skeptical).

i have a "i'll believe it when i see it" attitude about clean coal, pushing the burden of proof back on the industry.  but i'm not about to condemn the thousands of jobs in rural america or their workers who think that they are part of the solution.  that's politically -- and morally, afaic -- a loser.  they need to see that we are not attacking them but the entire problem of global warming.  there are many, many problems that we need to solve to address this issue and focusing on one industry with american workers in poor areas isn't going to help solve them.  we need to build a broad consensus for shared sacrifice, and we aren't going to get everything we want...

Clinton and Obama on this?  She has encouraged coal companies to keep working on making coal a resource if it can be "clean".  Obama is sponsoring legislation that sucks up to the coal companies.  This is not surprising considering some of his earliest and most generous supporters are the coal lobbyists.  The state lobbyists are the same people as the "DC lobbyists" Obama likes to pretend he is against.  They are the SAME PEOPLE.  It is just that the state lobbyists are allowed to spend a little less time in DC.

"She has encouraged coal companies to keep working on making coal a resource if it can be "clean".

This is a cover, and a very cynical one. Every dime spent on "greenwashing" coal (a very bogus enterprise) is a dime stolen from wind and solar.

Conversations about which candidate is a little worse than the other on this are unproductive in this context.  Both Obama and Clinton are so much better than McCain on almost everything and neither are good on coal.

So let's make a deal: as someone who has donated money to Obama's campaign, I will write him what I wrote here telling him his position is full of crap and I will identify myself as a donor.  I urge every other Obama supporter to do the same.

Will those of you who are Clinton supporters write your candidate and tell her that, as a supporter, you oppose her position on "clean" coal and would like her to stop using industry insider buzzwords and, instead, advocate for a more healthy environmental policy?

This isn't about Obama vs. Clinton.  This isn't about either candidate being acceptable on this issue.  This is about challenging the people we support to be better than they are, and challenging ourselves to do more than just advocate for a given individual.

What I'm about to say may seem rude, but I still think it's worth saying, and this goes for everyone supporting any candidate in this race: iIf you can't look at your own candidate and make objective criticisms that help them to be better candidates and better leaders, I don't understand why you're interested in politics.