Allison Roberts News

After years of waging disinformation campaigns, the U.S. cigarette industry finally accepted that cancer-wary Americans were lighting up less.  Big Tobacco found a lucrative new market, however:  It stepped up exports to Asia. Big Coal seems set on a similar strategy.  With construction of new coal plants being blocked across America — and states like Washington phasing out coal — the export market beckons, …

When the locals don’t want your coal, sell it overseas

Allison Roberts News

The world’s largest surface coal mine complex is a landscape unto itself. Six 200-foot-high draglines tear open the earth and scoop the black coal into gigantic dump trucks that make school buses look like playthings. Two dozen loaded-down trains, each a mile long, slide out of the mine complex every day, headed for power plants hundreds and even thousands of …