The ironies concerning the coal terminal proposal range from coal replacing ancestral Lummi burial grounds to it blowing back across the Pacific as instant karma. This issue is parallel with the tobacco industry. American smoking continues to decline while corporate profits continue rising. This is because we are pushers who pawn off an addiction that we are learning to resist upon less educated countries that are in earlier stages of development. The net effect is corporate profit and sick people.

Coal is going through the same cycle. Our country has found cheaper and more environmentally friendly fuel sources. Corporate America's solution is once again to pawn it off to other countries for profit. Except this time I believe there would be a trail of tears from mining to transportation to blowback. If left in the earth, new clean technology may someday make it valuable for us.

American Electric Power recently agreed to close three coal plants in the midwest. The clean air task force determined that doing so will prevent 203 deaths, 310 heart attacks, 3,160 asthma attacks and 188 emergency room visits annually.

What is a fair price for profit? What will it take for us to wake up?

Harvey Schwartz

Bellingham