Saturday 3pm

Coal is one of the hottest topics surrounding Powershift 09 and a main focus for environmental activist groups this year – one could easily say it is the environmental issue of 2009. Here, dozens of workshops are focusing on it and groups such as Mountain Justice Summer and Rising Tide North America have had a constant flow of attention around their displays. The panel discussion today entitled "The Story of Coal: Past, Present, and Future" was at capacity three minutes after the scheduled time. This afternoon, a group paraded through the DC Convention Center with banners and giant homemade windmills singing "No more coal" to the melody of "Follow the Yellow Brick Road". The myth of clean coal is seen as one of the biggest obstacles to phasing it out as a prominent source of energy. Last night Van Jones stated, "We could have clean coal – we could! Also, let's have unicorns pull our cars for us too. There's no such thing as unicorns, there's no such thing as fairies, and there's definitely no such thing as clean coal." It's obvious: coal's role in climate change is in the limelight and will not be overlooked. The Capitol Climate Action on Monday is sure to spur hundreds of direct actions by environmental groups this year, focusing on the same issues.