Even After the Climate Canary Has Died, Will We Keep Digging the Coal Mine Deeper?

From Washington Post political cartoonist Tom Toles:

Even as America weans itself off of coal-fired electrical power, coal corporations want to keep mining and export America's to developing countries. That way Americans don't get any of the electricity, but our natural resources are still plundered, our climate is still polluted, taxpayers are still on the hook, and big coal corporations still get to reap all the profit. What's not to like?

Toles: GOP Mascot Should Go Back to the Future

With Republican Party leadership rejecting the realities of modern science, Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles suggests it's time to update the GOP mascot:

Should Coal-Fired Pollution Get a Tobacco-Style Warning Label?

Just the particle pollution from coal-fired power plants kills 13,000 Americans each year through heart attacks, strokes, lung cancer, birth defects & premature death, according to the American Lung Association. That number doesn't even consider threats from other pollutants like arsenic & mercury or the dangers of coal mining.

And carbon pollution from coal-fired power plants is a prime driver of global warming, which is fueling more climate-connected extreme weather events that have helped turn 2011 into the Year of the Natural Disaster.

All that leads Tom Toles to ask in today's Washington Post: Cigarettes come with warning labels - why not coal-fired power plants?