War on Coal

Fantasy benefits and painfully real costs in the War on Coal   GOOD AFTERNOON TO EVERYONE! Every story about the twilight of "global warming" ideology includes angry claims from the climate-change crew that their opponents are the paid henchmen of sinister energy interests. We're not supposed to think about the very powerful, very wealthy special interests who profit handsomely from environmentalist regulations.   Who has a stronger vested interest in such regulations than the agencies that produce them? Laws like the Clean Air Act are a full-employment program for bureaucrats and lawyers. New regulatory regimes, like the EPA's new proposal for muscling the coal power industry out of business, are rolled out with fanciful claims of taxpayer benefit, plucked from thin air... and very real costs, plucked from private-sector wallets.   Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, regulators gotta regulate... if we put a trillion-dollar bureaucracy in place, we shouldn't be surprised that it fills the economy with a lot of toxic waste and job-choking paperwork emissions.   The strange thing about the current War on Coal drama, which has some Democrats from coal states taking arms against Barack Obama's EPA, is that the regulators openly admit their latest plans wouldn't actually do much good for the environment, even when judged under their own questionable climate-change assumptions. Big Government doesn't even waste time pretending there is any real demand for the legislative and regulatory "products" we are compelled to pay for.   Source:  Email from Daily Events, John Hayward, Senior Writer   Comments: 70% or our electrical energy comes from coal-fired power plants.  Some of these are old and are being replaced by natural gas, which is lower now, but not as cost-effective as coal and nuclear at 2 cents/kwh for production cost.  As electrical power consumers, we are better served by coal and nuclear.  Our electric utilities should be free to continue to provide their customers with the lowest cost options. Global warming is a hoax and expensive or unhelpful alternative energy deployment is a scam.  Carbon capture is unnecessary and carbon credit sales is another scam. Norb Leahy, Dunwoody GA Tea Party Leader