Even if he doesn't invoke global warming, Kerry has made a commitment to ensure that 20 percent of electricity in the country will come from sources like wind, solar and biomass by 2020. Today, renewable energy accounts for about 2 percent of electricity used in the U.S., while coal accounts for some 50 percent.

At the same time, Kerry is making big promises to the coal industry. He's pledged $10 billion for "clean coal" -- a phrase that the Bush/Cheney team is also fond of using but many environmentalists consider an oxymoron.

"Clean-coal technology is the fossil fuel lobby's answer to the emperor's new clothes," says Gelbspan, the author of "Boiling Point."

Ballantine claims that Kerry would spend twice as much as Bush on clean coal. "We want to spend a little less time fighting about whether coal is too dirty and make it cleaner to use," he argues. "When the president talks about clean coal, he talks about it in terms of this one futuristic plant that they want to build in the next 15 or 20 years. John Kerry is talking about deploying existing clean coal technologies now."

Coal plants can be made to burn somewhat more efficiently through a process called gasification -- which would result in less carbon dioxide per kilowatt hour of electricity generated -- but the industry has not adopted the technology.

The Kerry campaign is "promoting a technology that the industry has to be dragged into kicking and screaming," says John Coequyt, energy policy specialist for Greenpeace. "Yes, the technology exists, but nobody wants to do it. The solution is to pour a bunch of money at the utilities and drive them into doing it. What Kerry is proposing to do is basically bribe companies into building these plants."

And those plants would still release CO2 into the atmosphere, even if they would generate less soot. To reduce CO2 from coal, Bush and Kerry also talk about the importance of developing carbon sequestration, an experimental plan to capture the emissions and trap them underground. That too draws skepticism from environmentalists, who say the money should be invested in renewable energy.

"There is enough wind potential to provide all of the electricity in the United States with renewables," says Randy Hayes, founder of Rainforest Action Network and director of sustainability for the city of Oakland, Calif. "We don't have the transmission lines to get it out but that's where the government should come in with infrastructure support. That's an investment in a good future vs. an insidious subsidy to a polluting coal industry."

The Sierra Club's executive director, Carl Pope, has ridiculed Bush for trying to dress up dirty policy by using "sweet names like 'clean coal.'" But now that the Sierra Club has endorsed Kerry, it refuses to analyze his specific policy proposals. "We think that John Kerry's plan is better than the Bush administration's, both in proposals and in practice," says Kerri Glover, a spokesperson for the group. "We don't want to be critical because we think he's going to take us in a better direction. It's head and shoulders above what we have now."

Should voters then believe Kerry won't keep his promises to Ol' King Coal? Environmentalists aren't so sanguine on that prospect. "In this day, you are held to your words," says Kert Davies, research director for Greenpeace, who calls Kerry's coal policy "God Bless West Virginia." Kerry is "now making promises in these documents that must be carried out. We expect more vision from someone who we know is as intelligent on these issues as John Kerry."

The mining industry itself is certainly keeping score. It put out a statement applauding what its members see as a reversal of Kerry's previously tough stand on global warming: "In contrast to his past statements of support for binding international agreements to address climate change, his coal technology investment plan now acknowledges the unacceptable hardships that such a treaty could impose on coal mining and on the U.S. economy."

Environmentalists argue that instead of pledging to save the jobs of miners in West Virginia by subsidizing more efficient coal plants, Kerry should be emphasizing new jobs created by investment in renewable energy.

"Right now, they're falling into the old jobs-vs.-environment trap," says Davies from Greenpeace. "It's easy to pander to the coal miners and say we shouldn't do this on the backs of Americans. Yet a true, visionary clean energy policy would a positive thing. It doesn't have to be seen as costing coal miners their jobs. Frankly, I think that a lot of coal miners would like to do something else. And there aren't that many of them. And we can do better for states where those are their only jobs. They could be making wind turbines."

But for now environmentalists are willing to leave the battle over coal to another day. "From a political point of view, there is nothing to be gained," says Goodstein. "Environmentalists are so motivated and so angry that they're going to work for Kerry." Adds Hayes: "We all know that politicians say what they need to say to get elected. But if you look closely at environmental track records, if you compare Bush to Kerry, you have the devil and the angel."

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