Green nation?

There have been a number of commercials depecting a meeting in which then presidential hopeful Barak Obama is clearly supporting clean coal (McCain supports it too) and If we can use coal cleanly thats Ok as far as it goes.

But its not enough. Look at what coal mining (often strip mining) does to the land, it leaves scars from which the land will not recover for hundreds if not thousands of years. The Federal standards for compacting the soil when its returned require it to be very tight to prevent runoff (since there is no vegitation or topsoil to support it) which in turn allows only the meanest of scrub to be able to take root. I've no idea why they don't require a proper restoration...oh yeah it would cost too much; God forbid a company be required to actually restore what they've destroyed.

What about Solar? Hmmm letsee and inexhaustable supply (well, a couple billion years worht anyway) of non polluting, no carbon energy. Why not put a billion or two in research dollars into making more efficient solar collectors, maybe a satellite gathering system and beam more concentrated energy to Earth based collectors. You can't tell me that the nation that got to the moon in 10 years can't do this. No frikkin way.

Why waste the money to make a dirty technology clean when we can build a 100% clean tech in the same amount of time?

Anyone?