Coal Mining: Can Clean Be the New Green? While trying to choose a topic for my response paper, I came across the article on the SEED magazine website titled "The Lesser Evil": Nuclear or Coal?” Since I live not only in a mining town, but also in a county that without the coal industry would no longer exist, I wanted to not only see what exactly was so “evil” about coal, but also how it could be made safer . .With global warming, acid rain and other issues emerging in the present, I have focused primarily on the effect coal mining has on the environment. Environmental effects from coal mining include the release of carbon dioxide and methane which both contribute to the greenhouse effect. Hazardous gases are not only released when coal is burned, but also when pockets of gas are released during mining. Soil and groundwater are also damaged when acidic runoff flows underground and into water sources and changes pH levels. When the soil table is changed, the soil can become infertile. The lack of vegetation can cause erosion and compromise the possibility of having agricultural biodiversity. When the pH of water changes, aquatic life can also die. Mining not only changes the pH of water, but can also result in drainage or contamination of usable groundwater. The article from the SEED Magazine website highlighted the fact that research is being done right now that would help make mining clean. Mining would be cleaner in the sense that emissions would not be as harmful to the environment. Digging into the research a little deeper, I found that there were many ideas on how to make coal energy better for the environment. Wikipedia provided some and... half of the paper... last statement. I don't see why we should just throw away what we already know about coal as an energy source and start over with something new that in twenty years could bring us back to the situation we are in now. Who knows what effects nuclear energy, if it is what comes next, could have on the environment or what emissions it could produce in the future. Now I have learned what is so called “bad” in coal mining, but I have also seen that there are ways to give coal a better outlook for the future. I just hope there will be more efforts towards clean coal mining before people give up on the source. Since there is more than one option to make coal production and use cleaner, I believe there is still an opportunity to help make coal the new green option and clean up the environment at the same time.