Nixon's Head
05-24-2007, 09:00 AM
Indiana’s inconvenient truth, John Blair said, is its dirty little secret: the state produces pollution far out of proportion to its size and population.
“I’ll tell you what,” the Evansville environmental activist told an audience Wednesday night at the Monroe County Public Library. “Indiana is a pit. Indiana is the worst.”
In a presentation titled modeled on Al Gore’s global warming talks, Blair said Indiana contributes far more than its share of the greenhouse gases that are making the Earth hotter, not to mention toxic and acid rain-producing chemicals. The state ranks:
• No. 1 in airborne emissions of carbon dioxide.
• In the top three for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.
• Fourth for mercury.
“What’s the common bond in all this? Coal-fired power plants,” he said.
Blair heads the southwestern Indiana environmental group Valley Watch, which he started in 1981.
In a career as a journalist and activist, he has won a Pulitzer Prize for photography and been arrested for protesting a speech by Vice President Dick Cheney.
He underwent training for making presentations from Gore’s Climate Project, and blended its slides on global carbon emissions with his own aerial photos of mammoth power plants and smoggy air, and maps pinpointing giant polluters in the Tri-State area where Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois meet.
“Between the three states on this map,” he said, “342 million tons of carbon dioxide.”
Blair said relying on coal is wasteful as well as dirty. All but 35 percent of its energy is lost in combustion, he said. Energy is used shipping the coal from mine to plant; and power leaks away when electricity is transmitted hundreds of miles to where it’s used, often in inefficient appliances.
“You’re getting a whopping 2.5 percent out of it when you finally use it. You’re wasting the rest,” he said.
It’s not just power plants that are polluting southwestern Indiana, Blair said.
Three industrial plants in rural/suburban Warrick, Spencer and Gibson counties by themselves emit more toxic chemicals into the air than all of Los Angeles and Orange counties in California, he said, citing government Toxic Release Inventory data.
Two of the plants produce more toxins than the California counties plus Cook County, Ill., home of Chicago.
“We live in a pollution hot spot,” he said. “Most of the country is reducing these chemicals, but not our area.”
Source (http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2007/05/24/news.qp-2438637.sto).
“I’ll tell you what,” the Evansville environmental activist told an audience Wednesday night at the Monroe County Public Library. “Indiana is a pit. Indiana is the worst.”
In a presentation titled modeled on Al Gore’s global warming talks, Blair said Indiana contributes far more than its share of the greenhouse gases that are making the Earth hotter, not to mention toxic and acid rain-producing chemicals. The state ranks:
• No. 1 in airborne emissions of carbon dioxide.
• In the top three for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and particulate matter.
• Fourth for mercury.
“What’s the common bond in all this? Coal-fired power plants,” he said.
Blair heads the southwestern Indiana environmental group Valley Watch, which he started in 1981.
In a career as a journalist and activist, he has won a Pulitzer Prize for photography and been arrested for protesting a speech by Vice President Dick Cheney.
He underwent training for making presentations from Gore’s Climate Project, and blended its slides on global carbon emissions with his own aerial photos of mammoth power plants and smoggy air, and maps pinpointing giant polluters in the Tri-State area where Indiana, Kentucky and Illinois meet.
“Between the three states on this map,” he said, “342 million tons of carbon dioxide.”
Blair said relying on coal is wasteful as well as dirty. All but 35 percent of its energy is lost in combustion, he said. Energy is used shipping the coal from mine to plant; and power leaks away when electricity is transmitted hundreds of miles to where it’s used, often in inefficient appliances.
“You’re getting a whopping 2.5 percent out of it when you finally use it. You’re wasting the rest,” he said.
It’s not just power plants that are polluting southwestern Indiana, Blair said.
Three industrial plants in rural/suburban Warrick, Spencer and Gibson counties by themselves emit more toxic chemicals into the air than all of Los Angeles and Orange counties in California, he said, citing government Toxic Release Inventory data.
Two of the plants produce more toxins than the California counties plus Cook County, Ill., home of Chicago.
“We live in a pollution hot spot,” he said. “Most of the country is reducing these chemicals, but not our area.”
Source (http://www.heraldtimesonline.com/stories/2007/05/24/news.qp-2438637.sto).