The plug-in car is getting all sorts of gaga responses and exciting everybody by the prospects of the clean driving and so on. But, of course, when you plug in a car the power has to come from somewhere. Is going to electric power, which uses coal gotten through mountaintop removal, transport costs for the coal via rail and barge, and then of course the mercury cloud producing wonders of modern electric plants, really an improvement over oil? The elimination of emissions is good, but this in not a solution to the problem, it is just a temporary measure. And as terrible as pumping oil out of the wretched sands of the Middle East is for any number of reasons, is it preferable to destroy forever the Appalachians just so we can attempt to continue our expiring life style utterly unchanged?