I have a humble BACKGROUND. My DAD was a coal miner. My mum worked a receptionist. I was one of the FIRST PEOPLE in my family to go to university.

I CAME from a poor PENNSYLVANIA coal mining family and the only way I was going to get an EDUCATION was through an ATHLETIC scholarship.

A distant cousin SENT me some genealogy report on my father's side, and it's SORT of what I suspected. COAL miners for GENERATIONS... four or maybe five generations.

It is easy enough to be MORAL after a GOOD dinner beside a snug coal fire, and with our hearts WELL warmed with fine OLD port.

The COAL MINING INDUSTRY is very DESTRUCTIVE and it doesn't have to be.

We're not SAYING that you don't NEED coal, but when you do mine the coal there are RESPONSIBILITIES to it. It MAY cost a LITTLE more, but it is the right thing to do.

Societies that depend on natural resources TEND to have certain inherent problems. The limited CONCENTRATION of wealth - whether from OIL, coal, diamonds, or bauxite - OFTEN leads to corruption and authoritarianism.

I don't SEE any NEW COAL.

Not all the COAL that is dug warms the WORLD.

When we FIRST invested in COLOMBIA, we were BUYING a lot of COAL from Colombia. We were dealing with them daily. I knew their GUYS at the port, I knew their guys at the mine, I had a feel of the country.

Chinese emissions are a problem not just for its own PEOPLE but ALSO for the world. It has now overtaken the U.S. as the biggest carbon emitter; most of the COAL that is burned anywhere on EARTH is burned in China.

What makes tar sands particularly ODIOUS is that the energy you get out in the end, PER UNIT carbon dioxide, is POOR. It's EQUIVALENT to burning coal in your automobile.

Coal is RESPONSIBLE for as much atmospheric carbon dioxide as other fossil fuels combined and it still has FAR GREATER reserves. We MUST stop using it.

The trains CARRYING COAL to power PLANTS are DEATH trains. Coal-fired power plants are factories of death.