Image by Flickr user Jono Brennan Image by 20091012-coal.jpg
The Post and Courier has penned a piece that notes South Carolina's energy production has surged over the last two decades, and that almost all of that increased capacity is coming from the target du jour: Coal.
Read more stories on this subject in our energy topic page.However after noting the increase in South Carolina, the paper pushes on to mount a largely unsuccessful discussion about the greater issues of climate warming and Cap and Trade.
It's not that the writing is poor, it's just that mixing South Carolina's energy profile and these larger issues seems to just be too much for one article.
So, go on and read the first 12 paragraphs. Regardless if you think global warming is hogwash, I think we can all agree that a 50% rise in the amount of stuff we put into the air we breath is not a good thing.
Why the surge in use? The paper doesn't go very far down that path, though two factors come to mind: How our state's population ballooned over those years, and how each of our homes use 47% more energy than the national average.
And while I'm on the matter of statistics, if you flaunted my advice and read beyond the first 12 paragraphs, you'd have stumbled on this horrible sentence: "Texas tops the list with 677 million tons, or more than 7.5 times what's released in South Carolina, followed by California."
Well, yes, it's not surprising that states with many, many times the population of South Carolina, many, many times the land area, and far more industry would probably use more energy and produce more CO2.
