"What they're not looking at is ultimately the extraordinary cost--both the human cost and the actual cost.." says Jeff Biggers, author of Reckoning at Eagle Creek: The Secret Legacy of Coal in the Heartland. After the Massey mine explosion and BP oil spill last year, we now face a nuclear disaster in Japan. The question, then, is whether we take the opportunity to push for truly clean energy or hunker down and retreat to the old faithful sources that are slowly killing us.

Jeff joins us via Skype to discuss the possibility for better energy policy post-Japan, the new coal mines opening up in Wyoming, and much more.

The Triangle Shirtwaist Fire was 100 years ago this week, and while labor groups and historians commemorate the deaths of 146 workers from unsafe working conditions, around the country conservatives are trying to erase all those years of labor history. The latest, in Maine, is that a Republican governor wants to have a mural at the state labor department painted over; its depiction of Maine's labor history, including the first woman labor secretary Frances Perkins, has been deemed too "one-sided."

What do we lose when we forget workers' history? Sarita Gupta of Jobs With Justice and Maine state representative Diane Russell join Laura to discuss the stories we need to remember.