Ted Nace is currently the director of CoalSwarm, a collaborative information clearinghouse for anti-coal activists. Founded in 2008, it serves as a nerve center for the grassroots movement that has stopped the construction of over 130 proposed coal plants. CoalSwarm is a project of the Earth Island Institute, which was founded by environmental pioneer David Brower, and was created in collaboration with the Center for Media and Democracy.
Nace's most recent book is Climate Hope: On the Front Lines of the Fight Against Coal.
He is also the author of Gangs of America: The Rise of Corporate Power and the Disabling of Democracy, a historic examination of the rise of corporations in Britain and the United States, and the development of judicial doctrines of corporate rights.
He speaks frequently on coal, climate change, and the influence of corporate power in American politics. He writes for a variety of publications, most frequently for the environmental blog Grist.
In this installment of ShiftShapers, Mr. Nace describes to co-host Daniel Kerbein the environmental and health damage caused by coal burning and mining, and makes a case for the uselessness of all this danger caused by a dying coal industry, when we live in an entrepreneurial country with plenty of energy alternatives right at our fingertips. 
Daniel adds further points from the literature of the Sierra Club, a national environmental organization that works with Coal Swarm and is also committed to ending coal mining and coal burning power plants.