The official selection of the 2011 Sundance Film Festival now is open in select cities. It will only play for a few days.

The Last Mountain documents the effects of coal companies on the environment, health and jobs in America.

• Almost half of the electricity produced in the U.S. comes from the burning of coal.
• In the last decade the coal mining industry spent more than $86 million, the railroad industry spent $350 million, and coal burning electric utilities spent more than $1 billion on political campaigns and lobbying.
• Each year emissions from coal-fired power plants contribute to more than 10 million asthma attacks, brain damage in up to 600,000 newborn children, and 43,000 premature deaths.
• The health and environmental costs associated with mining, transporting and burning coal, as reported by a new Harvard Medical School study, are estimated to be $345 billion annually – or more than 17¢ per kilowatt hour. These costs are often referred to as “externalities” since they are costs borne by the public which are not reflected in the price of coal-fired electricity.
• Per the Harvard Medical School report noted above, the cost of coal electricity goes up by approximately 17¢ per kilowatt hour, totaling 23.1¢ – or nearly three times that of wind – if you include the following costs borne by the public: Air Pollution Illnesses, Mercury Poisoning, Health Damages from Carcinogens, Public Health Cost to Appalachia, Climate Change Impact.

Wow, coal costs triple when you account for impact on health? And it’s linked to criminal activity?

Over the past 10 years they’ve destroyed 1.4 million acres illegally. They’ve flattened 500 of the biggest mountains in West Virginia. They’ve illegally buried 2,200 miles of rivers and streams. They detonate the equivalent explosive power every week of the Hiroshima bomb, just in West Virginia.

The data being compiled brings to mind the movement that eliminated coal in London, England.

That city used to think that it had a naturally heavy fog, until they realised that it was a toxic cloud from burning coal. Change really came only after catastrophe, like the deadly winter of 1873

London is famous for its smoky, dirty skies and “pea-soup” nights wrapped in heavy fog. For many, the fog provides a romantic setting for mystery and intrigue, but even Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famous character, Dr. Watson, describes the fog as a “greasy, heavy brown swirl…condensing in oily drops upon the window panes.” During this winter, the fog lasted from November to February. In the week following the worst of it, deaths rose 75%.

Then there was the deadly winter of 1952

…a toxic mix of dense fog and sooty black coal smoke killed thousands of Londoners in four days. It remains the deadliest environmental episode in recorded history.

The so-called killer fog is not an especially well-remembered event, even though it changed the way the world looks at pollution. Before the incident, people in cities tended to accept pollution as a part of life. Afterward, more and more, they fought to limit the poisonous side effects of the industrial age.

[…]

Everyone in London walked blind for the next four days. By the time the smog blew off on Tuesday Dec. 9, thousands of Londoners were dead, and thousands more were about to die. Those who had survived no longer spoke of London’s romantic pea-soup fog.

The effect of coal on London was captured by artists and writers of the time. Their work has become a reference point that still shows up today when discussing pollution, as found in a recent article by the New York Times:

There is a Dickensian feel to much of the region. Roads are covered in coal tar; houses are coated with soot; miners, their faces smeared almost entirely black, haul carts full of coal rocks; the air is thick with the smell of burning coal.

There are growing concerns about the impact of this coal boom on the environment. The Asian Development Bank says it is financing pollution control programs in Shanxi because the number of people suffering from lung cancer and other respiratory diseases in the province has soared over the past 20 years.

The difference in America clearly (pun not intended) seems to be that killer coal effects are being spread out over rural communities (the last mountains, lakes, streams) instead of cities and so it is hidden — taking much longer to be accounted for and traced to human decision.

Obvious lessons from history, such as Dickensian London or even a more recent Kathmandu, apparently are not enough to motivate the US to properly regulate coal, reduce harm and seek less costly (e.g. cleaner) alternatives.

“You won’t believe that this is America….and now it’s what we imagine Hell to be.” — Emmylou Harris

Richard White, author of Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America will, next Thursday evening at Presidio of San Francisco, lecture about security and the history of transportation as a service.

One justification for federal funding of the transcontinental railroads was the need to save California for the Union, but by the time construction got underway, the Civil War was over and California was safe. The railroads were built ahead of demand, floundered in bankruptcy, and created political and economic problems that plagued the West for a generation.