It was on the news today again that the decision on the so-called "Future Gen" coal fired power plant will be soon, and the two Illinois sites, Mattoon and Tuscola, are hopefully going to get it. Future Gen is basically a billion dollar plus coal fired power plant with scrubbers and CO2 sequestration. Sequestration means that they are going to capture the stuff coming out of the stack after it burned, and inject it deep in the ground in certain rock formations where it will remain out of the atmosphere forever. Soe they say. Blah, Blah, and a third Blah.

We have been thru Tuscola and Mattoon several times in the last months, and while there are the typical, "Welcome Future Gen" signs in both placs, almost surprisingly, there are a number of "anti" signs there also. Used to be, when we first got into the environmental movement back in the early 80s, that you would never see such public signs of going against the economic powers in a rural Illinois small town. But, things have changed.

I went with Craig Rhodes several years ago to a big time presentation on Future Gen that was held at SIU. I mean, all the big dogs were there - or at least their offices had reps there. The Dept. of Energy had a rep there that gave a fancy powerpoint presentation about why Illinois would be the best place. The reason is because there is lots of coal available and, upstate, there are these rock formations like over 10,000 feet down in the ground that they think will hold and/or convert the sequestered CO2. to some other chemical that isn't so damaging.

This is about as unstudied an undertaking as you can imagine. Besides, how exactly are "they " going to do this? According to someone I know, in order to liquify CO2, it has to be cooled a lot and put under pressure. Sure sounds like a lot of effort. Actually, very little is known about carbon capture. All of this is being pushed by the coal industry. They are fighting in every way imaginable to keep selling coal, regardless of the fact that it is destroying the environment in so many ways. The same kind of industries told us that DDT was perfectly safe.

Oh sure, the powers that be may and probably will push thru carbon sequestration. Do I think that is going to solve our climate change problems? Heck no. But some people will get really rich on the idea or trying.