The warfare against coal has entered the end
game. Two years ago, The EPA an Out of Control Monster virtually prohibited the construction of future facilities.
“The Environmental Protection Agency effectively banned new coal-fired
power plants Tuesday, announcing emission rules that will make them uneconomical to build. This follows other recent rules
squeezing coal. The actions show the administration following through on an earlier promise to crack down on the industry
via regulation after the "cap and trade" carbon bill stalled in Congress in 2010."The proof of Obama ‘All the Above’ Strategy Does Not Include Coal, is seen by his EPA policy. “
Now
the death knell of existing coal generation operations are scheduled for extinction. With the Obama announces power plant regulations, GOP lawmakers vow fight, the final battle has its call to arms.
“The plan calls for a 32 percent emissions cut by 2030, as compared with 2005 levels. The goals
are even steeper than previously expected.
But already, the plan faces tough resistance. The Murray Energy Corporation, a coal mining
company, announced Monday it would sue, and more than a dozen states and other companies were expected to take similar action.”
Bloomberg sums up the situation accordingly in Coal Left Fighting Over America’s Last Plants as Rules Mount.
“America’s
coal miners are so desperate, beaten down by the lowest prices in eight years, increasing competition and mounting environmental
regulations, that they’re battling each other for scraps.”
So the combat is not reserved to fighting just the EPA’s harsh regulations. The financial
fallout has been dire already. The Latest Sign That Coal Is Getting Killed makes the point that “The declining price of bonds is a huge problem for U.S. coal companies. When bond prices fall,
the cost of borrowing money goes up. And coal needs more money.”
The evitable is already commencing. Big U.S. coal miner Alpha Natural files for bankruptcy, “Alpha blamed its Chapter 11 bankruptcy on tougher regulatory standards and policies that favor renewable energy,
as well tumbling prices for its coal.”
Children
of the climate change cult can thank Barack Hussein Obama and the authoritarians of the global warming sect in the EPA for
the regulatory destruction of an entire industry that has mined the fuel to power our electric grid since its inception. However,
the real heavy lifting to undermine the use of a cheap and efficient source of electric power comes from the usual suspects.
Michael Grunwald writes in Politico, Inside the war on coal.
“If
you want to see how the fossil fuel that once powered most of the country is being battered by enemy forces, you have to watch
state and local hearings where utility commissions and other obscure governing bodies debate individual coal plants. You probably
won’t find much drama. You’ll definitely find lawyers from the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, the boots
on the ground in the war on coal.
Beyond Coal is the most extensive, expensive and effective campaign in the Club’s 123-year history, and maybe the history of the
environmental movement. It’s gone largely unnoticed amid the furor over the Keystone pipeline and President Barack Obama’s
efforts to regulate carbon, but it’s helped retire more than one third of America’s coal plants since its launch
in 2010, one dull hearing at a time. With a vast war chest donated by Michael Bloomberg, unlikely allies from the business
world, and a strategy that relies more on economics than ecology, its team of nearly 200 litigators and organizers has won
battles in the Midwestern and Appalachian coal belts, in the reddest of red states, in almost every state that burns coal.”
The war on coal is real, and one side is clearly winning also reminds that “a 2014 Supreme Court ruling that allowed the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate energy
under the Clean Air Act, stricter limits on emissions from coal plants have made coal slightly more expensive.”
As even the causal spectator to the environmental
brawl understands, science, facts, economics and reasoned arguments have little to do with the hard ball confrontations that
are played out to destroy the last remnants of free enterprise.
When an entire industry is slated for destruction under the schizophrenic doctrine of “saving the
planet”, one has to conclude that the mental stability of the true believers is even more in question than the future
of coal as a source of energy.
China and
India keep building as 2,100 new coal plants being planned worldwide. “The authors (CoalSwarm/Sierra Club) calculate that if even just one-third of these 2,177 coal plants being planned get built and last their full lifetimes,
the world will use up nearly all of the carbon budget needed to stay below 2°C of global warming — the widely agreed-upon
limit in international climate talks.”
This
conclusion conflict greatly with information provided in the common sense account, All This for .01 Degrees Celsius? As the president reveals his plan to reduce greenhouse gases to save us from an apocalyptic atmosphere, I wish to remind
people of three things:
1.)
The true hockey stick of the fossil fuel era: Global progress in total population, personal wealth and life expectancy.
2.) The geological time scale of temperatures versus CO2.
3.)
EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy admitted that the steps being taken would only prevent .01 degrees Celsius of warming,
but it was the example that counted for the rest of the world.
Just maybe the real apocalyptic atmosphere exists inside the disturbed minds
of the radical environmental fascists. When unholy alliances of collectivists joins together and encourage the EPA to do the
bidding of fanatics, the rule of law is destroyed.
Refusing to comply with the ruling of the Supreme Court Blocks Obama’s Limits on Power Plants, illustrates the arrogance and hubris of the global warming occult. What is at stake is much more than the abandonment of
a valuable industry. The war on coal is a campaign against all the people, since the objective is to raise electric costs
beyond the means of the newly unemployed coal miners.
James Hall – August 5, 2015
