Fashion Sense Says Clean Coal is as Unreal as Santa Claus

There have been some memorable images of Santa Claus this holiday season, including Santa Claus as murderer, but one Santa who tried to bring sanity rather than mayhem was the one who gave coal to the board members of the Tennessee Valley Authority and a message about the terrible consequences of using coal as an energy source. A few days later, a huge spill of toxic slurry into the Tennessee River emphasized the message that there's no such thing as clean coal -- even if it is possible to scrub away the greenhouse gases, the current method of extracting coal destroys whole mountains and coal's byproducts poison our waters. [Click on the image for a larger version of this cartoon. The text reads: 'The day after Christmas I was at Virginia's house giving her a leech therapy treatment, and the TV was on so we saw some news about that murderer who dressed as Santa Claus, and before I could say anything about the victims she said, "I'm really getting upset about people who make Santa Claus look bad because I love him, and I worry about his image," and I said, "I agree that he does have an image problem -- he flies all over the world every year giving out loads of consumer crap, and some people say he overworks those poor elves and abuses the reindeer," and she said, "Oh, I hope you don’t believe everything you hear. Poor Santa is a major celebrity, yet anybody who wants to can dress like him and impersonate him," and I said, "Did you hear about the the holding pond that broke recently and dumped millions of gallons of toxic coal slurry into the Tennessee River?" and she said, "What's that have to do with Santa?" and I said, "A few days before that happened, Santa Claus brought lumps of coal to board members of the Tennessee Valley Authority to tell them it’s bad of them to burn so much coal because slurry spills are polluting our water (which is where leeches live, you know), and coal creates huge environmental problems like the destruction of whole mountains when it’s extracted and the emission of greenhouse gases when it’s burned, so I was happy about what Santa did, though he ended up in jail, and then this latest disaster occurred," and she said, “See? That’s what I mean. Anybody can pretend to be Santa and use his good name to call attention to their cause, which ought to be illegal. Besides, I don’t think there’s any such thing as global warming, do you?" and I said, "Yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as global warming. And clean coal is even more of a fantasy than Santa Claus!”']