“The war on coal waged by major environmental organizations, combined with Obama’s hostility to coal is depriving Americans of a cheap, abundant source of energy.”
Killing Coal in America
By Alan Caruba
When I was a teenager, I made a lot of money as a magician entertaining at birthday parties and other events. The essence of stage magic is diverting the audience’s attention from what one is actually doing while creating the “illusion” that produces an entertaining surprise.
While the media was focused on stories last week about the House committee decision to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt and the subsequent declaration of executive privilege by the White House to delay the provision of information the committee had been seeking about Operation Fast and Furious for over a year, Americans were being deprived of one of the most affordable and proven sources of electrical power, coal.
In the Senate, on June 20, a resolution to block the imposition of the Environmental Protection Agency’s Maximum Achievable Control Technology (MACT) standards for hazardous air pollutant emissions from power plants failed.
The vote was 46 ayes to 53 nays. Among the Republicans who sided with the Democrats to kill the measure were Sens. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, Scott Brown of Massachusetts, and the two Maine Senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snow, neither of whom is a Republican in anything but name only. Their support of the EPA regulation will cost Americans dearly in jobs and the cost of electricity.
The Utility MACT rule is so bogus, so based on illusionary computer models, so devoid of any real science that it constitutes a brazen act of criminality. It asserts that the health risks from mercury emissions is such that it is necessary to impose a rule that, by its own estimates, implementing it will cost $9.6 billion in 2016.
Marlo Lewis of the Competitive Enterprise Institute points out that “in the 22 years since Congress tasked the EPA to study the health risks of mercury, the agency has not identified a single child whose learning or other disabilities can be traced to prenatal mercury exposure.” EPA cited the mercury risk as the “trigger” for the MACT rule.
There is no public health hazard from burning coal to produce electricity, but there is a very real hazard when such plants close down and cease to provide it.
The American Energy Institute notes that “coal’s share of U.S. electricity is expected to fall to below 40 percent this year from 42 percent last year and produce the lowest share since data was collected in 1949. Just five or six years ago, its share of electricity generation was 50 percent.”
The war on coal waged by major environmental organizations, combined with Obama’s hostility to coal is depriving Americans of a cheap, abundant source of energy and, last week, Democrats with the aid of some Republican Senators, just drove the price of electricity to new heights. It will close down plants that can no longer afford the cost of emissions control technology and it will close down some mining operations.
As then-candidate Obama said in 2008, under his proposed cap-and-trade legislation “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” adding that “So, if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can…it’s just that it will bankrupt them.”
When Cap-and-Trade legislation, based on the bogus EPA claim that carbon dioxide is a “pollutant” failed the far-Left Center for American Progress pressed Obama to bypass Congress and move the anti-coal, anti-energy agenda forward by manipulating regulatory and executive power.
If there was no other reason to defeat Obama in November and deprive Democrats of control of the Senate, it is what is occurred on Capitol Hill last week while Americans were distracted by efforts to thwart action regarding the “Operation Fast and Furious” scandal.
Distracted, too, by the mounting numbers of unemployed, by the stagnating economy, and by potential and negative news from the European Union and the Middle East, the attack on the nation’s ability to power homes, businesses and industries will only become news when the blackouts begin years down the road.
© Alan Caruba, 2012
http://factsnotfantasy.blogspot.com/2012/06/killing-coal-in-america.html
Alan Caruba’s commentaries are posted daily at “Warning Signs” and shared on dozens of news and opinion websites. His blog recently passed more than one million page views. If you love to read, visit his monthly report on new books at Bookviews. For information on his professional skills, Caruba Editorial Services is the place
12 Responses to Killing Coal in America
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I must agree with Alan when he speaks of the two senators from the state of Maine. I’d go further, however, and say that not only are they not Republicans, but they have very little interest in the well being of the state of Maine. Maine has one of the poorest paying labor markets, highest costs of living, and a very long heating season. Cheap energy would benefit the state enormously, but the boobsy twins just keep on voting the liberal line.
Few are the members of Congress that have the slightest interest in bettering the lives of those that they, theoretically, represent – the voters from their districts or states. It’s a shame that voters can’t wake up to the realities of life and vote drones out of office. Instead, all they seem to do is watch sporting events, “reality TV,” and believe anything that the “news media” feeds them. They’ll almost deserve waking up in an ice age with nothing in the pantry and no way to heat their homes, and will go the way of the dodo into extinction. I say almost because as a human being, I wish no ill on anyone, even those that persecute “climate deniers.”
Need to pull the plug to the DC (dumb crooks)area in Washington and let them live off the grid for awhile.. No fuel for generators, all food trucks turned back, no way in or out including helicoptors, find where all the eco freaks live and make them live off the grid as well. No paper, no toliet paper, no water, no nothing. They want to live like the dark ages, let them. Their bank accounts frozen as well as all congress and all associated henchmen. I believe they have stolen from us way to long.
Insane and insidious. This country is being kneecapped. Donate time, and / or critically, $.
Its baloney to put the blame on mercury emissions from coal burning power stations.
They don’t have a problem injecting mercury into little babies bodies.
Looks more like genocidal tendencies.
You know, there are to many of us!
Cheap energy is a temporary condition which will end with the depletion of fossil fuels. The only thing killing coal is the environmental destruction caused by fracking. Obama has totally failed to have any impact on CO2 emissions or coal. Usually these great ideas like trimming CO2 emissions don’t take effect till their own term of office is over. If they really wanted to cut the waste of energy they would balance the federal budget. What a joke. The concern for the environment is totally fake. They want you to save energy so THEY have more of it. More energy for their wars and billion dollar lifestyles of the elite who control puppets like Obama.
Forget about the coal!
Do we really still need the piston engine?
How about the suppressed and technologically advanced power?
It’s all about money, money money
If they can get rid of the coal-fired power stations then they can build new nuclear ones and someone’s getting a nice dash in his wallet!!!
This whole belief in AGW and CO2 is only for making money. Remember these guys don’t really care if its getting warmer or colder.
But someday they will because where they go, it will get so warm even their gold will melt!!!
I think the killing of the education system, top to bottom, has finally borne fruit. It was the aim of the New World Order, Fabian style, way back in the early 20′s. Technocrats to Rule. Unfortunately,most of the technocrats have come up through that system, the change was supposed to be earlier.
Technical genius we still have, but mostly without the basis of wide understanding of history and ethics to make good leaders.
It is approaching the time for us, “we the people” to close down our various governments in their entirety and start over.
Right on!
A fascist government is not brought about by a violent revolution. It is voted in, one rights-killing law at a time. Think of the analogy of how to cook a live frog: Put it in a pan of cold water and turn the heat on low. By the time the frog realizes it’s getting too hot, it’s too late.
Coal is not only a sound cheap energy source. It is one we have in sufficient abundance to last hundreds of years.
Even better, the CO2 it emits causes plants to grow, thus feeding the hungry all over the world, and saving endangered species.
When coal is all burned up, the trees it has grown can be harvested as renewable fuel–see my article on SuperRenewable Fuels at http://trillionplan.tripod.com
I am also writing an article on the benefits of carbon dioxide on bird and mammalian life, which I will post on that website.