Clean Cole is a misleading myth because today’s cold technologies can’t fully eliminate the carbon admission. It can’t reliably reduce toxins in the air and the toxins and water.But even though clean Coal sounds good for the environment, the phrase falls apart as soon as you look closer into what clean coal is and how it affects our environment. Coal is something that has been with us for centuries; it fuels our factories, lights up our streets, and homes. But it all has to come with a price, as it affects the carbon in the air adds toxins to the water and creates sicknesses in  Communities that live close to the coal industry plants. Calling it clean doesn’t magically erase the harm it does all it does is make the truth easier to ignore. Clean Coal is a phrase that describes how coal is burned with technologies meant to reduce pollution, like using filters or carbon capture.

Let’s talk about carbon emissions. When you burn the coal, it releases a carbon dioxide and that is the number one cause of climate change as some companies talk about carbon capture technology as a way to help the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in the New York Times, it pointed out that most projects lean Cole label do not capture carbon at all as the few that try face massive cost, and efficiency problems. (Plumer, 2017) .

 Pollution goes further than just carbon . In the Reuters op-ed, it talks about “how at many plants, burning so-called refined coal actually made nitrogen oxide pollution worse, even though companies were getting tax credits for supposedly cutting it”. (Morgenson & Rust, 2017) And if that isn’t bad enough for you, the chemical is used in the process, like calcium bromide, which didn’t just disappear when used it leaked into the water supply, raising dangerous byproducts in the drinking water for more than 1 million people and if that isn’t bad enough for you, the chemical is used in the process like calcium bromide didn’t just disappear when used it leaked into the water supply raising dangerous buyer products in the drinking water for more than 1 million people (Morgenson & Rust, 2017). So that’s just not clean, that’s just swapping one problem for another.

Something that I find very concerning is that by calling coal clean, all we do is dishonor the meaning of what clean energy really is. In an article written by Partnership for Policy Integrity (PFPI), they explained that when we let Coal companies claim the clean label, it confuses the people and slows down real progress. (Partnership for Policy Integrity, 2012). As companies that actually produce clean energy sources like wind and solar they all get overshadowed by marketing games claiming Coal is clean, which makes the coal company make more money, but that’s like putting junk food and healthy food in the same aisle just because the junk food says on the box that it's natural.

So even though Coal plants manage to reduce one pollutant, they always cause another problem somewhere else. The statement that clean coal is still around is because it works in politics. The New York Times explained that the term is more about politics than science; it shows up in speeches and ads, not in effective policy (Plumer, 2017) which is very unfortunate because it sounds good to the public and the uneducated on the situation, but it doesn’t change the fact that Coal isn’t truly clean and if it was companies would be pushing it so the next time you or someone say clean Cole just remember that it is just a slogan clean. Coal is not about science. It’s about selling an illusion. If we care about the planet and about our own health, we need to find alternatives and stop pushing the motive of clean coal.