You can be sure states like Kentucky and West Virginia have the Environmental Protection Agency in their gun sights.
Coal producers warned Congress last Friday that new pollution standards will “effectively outlaw construction of new coal-fired power plants, raise prices for electricity and cost jobs.” The new regulations will create the first cap on carbon emissions from new power plants.
Liberal Democrats base these new regulations on gases blamed for global warming.
A noticeably arrogant EPA administrator Gina McCarthy told the National Press Club in Washington, “These carbon pollution standards are flexible and achievable. They pave a path forward for the next generation of power plants.”
The regulations purposely are meant to bypass Congressional approval.
There was quick response from the Republicans. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican, said his panel will hold a hearing on the proposal. “The consequences will be more job losses and a weaker economy. These stringent standards will actually discourage investment and the development of innovative new technologies.”
Meanwhile, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., both from major coal producing states, replied angrily to the regulations the EPA imposed.
McConnell said in an email, “The president is leading a war on coal and what that really means for Kentucky families is a war on jobs,” while Manchin said the agency was holding the coal industry to “impossible standards. If these regulations go into effect, American jobs will be lost, electricity prices will soar and economic uncertainty will grow.”
A growing trend in the coal industry, thanks to the anti-coal message sent by the Obama White House, has been multiple shutdowns among coal burning plants. At a recent auction for a coal plant in Wyoming, there were no bidders according to the Bureau of Land Management.
Chris Faulkner, chief executive of the Dallas-based Breitling Oil and Gas Corp said, “We’re witnessing the death of the coal era and the birth of the natural gas era in America. I think Obama’s new carbon limits make a statement that natural gas is in fact the bridge fuel for America’s future.”
Many organizations celebrate the demise of coal including the Sierra Club and its head, Michael Brune. “Big polluters have been getting a free ride for decades, while Americans foot the bill in the form of asthma attacks, respiratory illness, floods, wildfires and super storms.”
The EPA’s regulations pave the way for more far-reaching set of rules governing emissions from existing power plants, which account for 40 percent of U.S. greenhouse-gas emissions.
