Just days after the Obama Administration’s EPA was slapped down by the courts in two cases of abuse of its power, the agency has doubled down on its ideological mission. This time, the EPA has proposed strict new rules on greenhouse gas emissions that will make it virtually impossible for coal-fired power plants to be built in the future.
Naturally, environmental extremists are celebrating, believing they have the coal industry on the ropes, while also protecting the planet from their global warming doomsday scenarios.
“It will make it nearly impossible to build a new coal plant,” said Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club. “The market has been moving in this direction anyway.”
David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council said, “This is a very important step and it’s really going to reinforce the market trend.”
Since when are environmental activists so concerned about trends in the free market? I suspect references are included to make the people responsible for trying to kill off an industry appear to be free market capitalists like the rest of us.
It’s true that the portion of U.S. electricity powered by coal is declining (it was down to 42 percent last year), but one of the reasons is that the anti-coal movement has been embraced by the Obama Administration, which is using executive fiat to make it harder to mine and burn coal.
West Virginia third district Congressman Nick Rahall, who has usually been able to find a balance between industry and the environment, believes the pendulum has swung too far in the direction of the environment. Rahall, appearing on Metronews Talkline Wednesday, said the Administration is abusing its authority following the failure of cap-and-trade legislation.
“They’re trying to back door climate change legislation that the Congress did not and will not enact,” Rahall said. “That’s what’s going on here.”
This is what we are getting now from an administration that claims to have an all-of-the-above approach to energy. Coal, one of the most economical and plentiful sources in the mix, has been targeted for elimination.
Sure, there will be existing coal-fired power plants on-line for years to come. Coal companies will still market their steam and steel-making coal to overseas buyers. But if the EPA’s new regulations are allowed to stand, the long-term outlook for the coal industry in this country is bleak.
What coal company is going to be willing to invest (even if it can acquire the money) in mining equipment and technology when its largest market—domestic energy production—is being taken away?
Imagine an entire industry, and one as important as coal, threatened with extinction by the decisions of unelected bureaucrats from a government agency, acting with the support of a President who claims to be for all forms of energy.
Ironically, some of West Virginia’s Democratic politicians had high hopes that Obama, who is from the coal state of Illinois, would be supportive of the industry. As it turns out, however, this administration is the most hostile to coal in recent history.
And it’s time that West Virginia’s Democratic elected officials who have supported this President call him on it.