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The waste from power plants is essentially what is left over when you burn coal. And as we all know, coal is a relatively dirty mineral.

To shut off coal, or to say you can't have further coal development, I think is the wrong way to go.

We don't want to leave the coal in the ground, and that necessarily is going to involve better technology with regard to clean uses of coal.

The coal mining industry is very destructive and it doesn't have to be.

Coal is responsible for as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as other fossil fuels combined and it still has far greater reserves. We must stop using it.

The coal industry is a huge industry when we're talking about polluting the environment, our air and our waterways.

From the industry's point of view, the problem is not that coal companies blast the top off mountains, turning the area into a moonscape and polluting the air and releasing toxic chemical into what's left of the local streams and aquifers. It's that the people who live near the mines are too cozy with their cousins.

Coal is cheap, but up to what extent are we going to allow coal plants to operate?

The end of coal in Appalachia doesn't mean that America is running out of coal (there's plenty left in Wyoming). But it should end the fantasy that coal can be an engine of job creation - the big open pit mines in Wyoming employ a tiny fraction of the number of people in an underground mine in Appalachia.