(Editor's Note: This is the fifth blog post in an ongoing series about proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest.)

Dr. Frank James is a member of Whatcom Docs, a group of medical doctors in Whatcom County, Wash., who are concerned about the health impacts of a proposed coal shipping terminal in Bellingham, Wash. The coal export terminal would ship up to 48 million tons of American coal overseas each year. The terminal operation would add approximately 30 miles of coal trains daily to the rail line that runs along the Puget Sound coast.

Dr. James is health officer for San Juan County, Wash. and for the Nooksack Indian Tribe, and a professor of public health at the University of Washington. We recently chatted with Dr. James about the forming of Whatcom Docs and what role the group is playing in the battle over coal export in the Pacific Northwest.

Coal dust drifts through downtown Seward, Alaska, which is home to a coal export terminal. (Resurrection Bay Conservation Alliance)

(Editor's Note: This is the third blog in an ongoing series about proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest. Upcoming blogs will examine the potential impact coal export terminals could have on the region's health and environment.)

Portland General Electric—a utility that operates power plants and supplies about half of Oregon’s electricity—thinks a coal export terminal proposed for construction at Port of St. Helens would generate too much pollution.

Um, can someone get the devil on the horn and check to see if hell officially froze over?

Longview, Washington.

(Editor's Note: This is the second blog in an ongoing series about proposed coal export terminals in the Pacific Northwest. Upcoming blogs will examine the potential impact coal export terminals could have on the region's health and environment.)

There are a whole lot of coal companies mining a whole lot of coal in Wyoming and Montana’s Powder River Basin. Although U.S. demand for coal is shrinking—thanks in part to Earthjustice’s successful campaign to shutter polluting coal-fired power plants—there are a whole lot of coal-fired power plants in Asia and a whole lot more planned for future construction.

You can probably see where this is going.

Considering the circumstances, it doesn’t take a trained economist to deduce that Powder River Basin mining companies are keen on selling Asia as much coal as possible. The only problem, from industry’s perspective, is how to transport the coal to the continent. Obviously, American coal will sit on a big boat during the last leg of the trip, but it’s the process leading up to the voyage across the Pacific that’s proving to be the sticky wicket.

Trains transport coal to export terminals in open cars, a mile-and-a-half long. (Shutterstock)

(Editor’s Note: This is the first in a series of blog posts by the author on issues related to proposed coal exporting from the Northwest.)

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe."

—John Muir

We are often reminded—perhaps nowhere more profoundly than in nature—that life does not persist solely of its own volition. When we look closer, we invariably find that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. In German, the phenomenon is called gestalt—the notion of the unified whole.

This is the proper lens through which to analyze the increasingly controversial issue of coal export in the Pacific Northwest. With domestic demand for coal waning in the United States, coal companies seek to ship as much coal as possible from Montana and Wyoming’s Powder River Basin to emerging Asian economies. Thus, there are six coal export terminal projects currently proposed for Pacific Northwest ports: Longview, Wash.; Bellingham, Wash.; Grays Harbor, Wash.; Coos Bay, Ore.; the Kinder Morgan terminal at Port of St. Helens, Ore.; and the Ambre Energy project with facilities at the Port of Morrow and the Port of St. Helens, Ore.

An environmental analysis examining each project in piecemeal fashion would not address the overall cumulative impacts to the region’s environmental health and quality of life. The cumulative impacts of the proposed coal export terminals would be significant: