By REED RUBINSTEIN
WASHINGTON -- A case can be made, upon reviewing the full sweep of President Barack Obama's first term, that the Administration's top priority has not been health care, the Iranian nuclear program or economic recovery. It has been, instead, the U.S. coal industry's ruination.
Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed a regulation with the innocuous title "Standards of Performance for Greenhouse Gas Emissions for New Stationary Sources: Electric Utility Generating Units," setting a carbon dioxide emissions limit that coal plants cannot meet, now or in the foreseeable future. According to Serra Club Executive Director Michael Brune, the proposed rule would make it "nearly impossible to build a new coal plant." The American Public Power Association agrees, stating the proposal will "kill coal going forward." continue reading ~ West Virginia's Legal Journal
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Rubinstein is a partner in Dinsmore & Shohl's Washington, D.C. office. He previously served as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Senior Counsel for environment, technology and regulatory affairs.
3 comments:
Who could hate a policy to kill coal electric generation? Coal burning is dirty business and should be put on the back burner - for the health of our planet. But, what do we replace it with? Surely not wind nor even solar. These renewables are sweet, pretty ideas, they look good in ads with flowers and blue skies, but the technologies are no more effective than band-aids. Killing coal is the easy part of the equation, the real challenge is finding a reliable, 24-7 replacement, which rules out renewables. (Gas and nukes, that's the answer)
Who could hate a policy to kill coal electric generation?
Maybe the 86,000 people employed by the coal industry.
Oh, I also suppose you don't like the restrictions we put on the tobacco industry? Imagine over 400,000 jobs linked to that stinky, smelly and dangerous to our health industry. But, to hell with healthy lungs, premature death and walking around with an O2 bottle, just give me a paycheck.
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