Thousands of Coal Miner & Supporters Protest War On Coal
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Members of Congress, union members, miners and their families stormed Capitol Hill to air their grievances about President Obama's policies that make it harder to burn or mine coal.
They were protesting the government shutdown that hasn't ended — that of the coal industry in pursuit of environmental goals that ignore global temperatures that haven't budged in 17 years and greenhouse-gas emission declines that have occurred as a result of energy industry technology and free market decisions.
Rep. Andy Barr, R-Ky., passionately told the crowd that Obama's coal policies are "immoral" and "outrageous." When coal plants shut down, he said, communities "have no customers, county governments have no tax revenues to invest in schools or infrastructure. The unemployment in some counties is in double digits . . ."
Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed carbon dioxide emissions caps for new power plants — a key feature of the administration's climate agenda. The caps effectively ban the construction of coal-fired power plants unless they use carbon capture and sequestration technology that doesn't really exist.
Another Kentucky Republican, Ed Whitfield, chairman of the House subcommittee on energy and power, called the new regulations "extreme" and said the change essentially renders it "illegal to build a coal-fired electricity-generating plant in America."
New coal-fired units will be required to meet a limit of 1,100 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour. Currently, the most efficient coal-fired plants emit CO2 at a rate of about 1,800 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour. Whitfield said the cleanest coal-fired electricity technology now available, known as ultrasupercritical, cannot meet the new EPA standard.
The EPA's response is that the new regs will prod the industry to develop newer and more efficient technology. The question is why.
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy says global climate change caused by carbon pollution "is one of the most significant public health threats of our time," thus forcing her agency to adopt stringent measures. Yet carbon emissions are declining while temperatures are not rising. The Energy Information Administration (EIA) on Oct. 21 released data showing energy-related carbon dioxide emissions declined by 3.8% in 2012.
And according to the EPA, emissions from power plants declined by 10%. CO2 emissions in the U.S. have actually declined by 12% since 2007 (see chart), while average global temperatures have been flat since 1998. Part of that is due to competition from increasingly abundant natural gas made so by improvements in an energy technology known as hydraulic fracturing.
The EIA notes the country saw an "overall decline" in power generation from renewable sources, but "the carbon intensity of power generation still fell by 3.5%, due largely to the increase in the share of natural gas generation relative to coal generation."
It would seem to us the free market is doing quite well in improving the environment and reducing greenhouse gas emissions without help from the EPA and its economy- and job-killing regulations.
"It probably pains the activist community to discover the oil and gas industry is doing more to reduce carbon emissions than any of their press releases ever have, but it's hard to argue with data," said Steve Everley, spokesman for Energy In Depth, a website run by the Independent Petroleum Association of America.
In this senseless and unnecessary war on coal, workers in the industry, the communities they live in and the American energy consumer are collateral damage.
Tags: miners protest, Washington, D.C., President Obama, War on Coal, war on energy, IBD, Investment Business Daily, editorial To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the ARRA News Service. Thanks!
Posted by Bill Smith at 8:07 PM - Post Link
2 Comments:
Last I checked their union (who they give money to every day) was all for Ogabe. I could be wrong, but picked that up in the news. Why should I care about their plight now? They chose their bed.
Yes, but the miner workers plight evidences the extreme radical agenda of the Obama EPA. Even the Unions cannot stop this effort which will affect all of us as evidenced in the article.
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