To the Honorable Dick Durbin
U.S. Senate
The FutureGen plant was an awful idea that even optimistic estimates expected to be, if and when it ever entered production, more expensive than already existing renewable technologies. On top of this the storage limits of the geological formations under any given plant are a finite and scarce resource: by the FutureGen Alliance numbers (2.5M tons/yr into a 50M ton formation) a plant could fill a formation in just 20 years. Nevermind the scarcity of such formations for building future plants: geological sequesterization's most notable feature is its planned obsolescence. We need solutions now for the long term, not solutions decades away for the short term.
You should be embarrassed for supporting it, not bemoaning it's loss.
If you're going to spend time working to bring home the bacon, the least you could do is get some that wasn't spoiled in the packaging. Efficiency improvements, mass transit, and renewable energy are all the last in line to receive federal handouts while hundreds of billions have been squandered on your friends in the CO2 lobby. They need some tough love: maybe you can get them that $1.8 billion for a new wind farm. They'd turn a profit sooner.
Please reconsider your support for clean coal.