Nuts To You, Speaker Bonehead!

Yesterday, EPA Secretary Gina McCarthy announced a proposed initiative to reduce power plant carbon emissions by 30% by 2030.  This would be the first-ever federal limitation imposed on carbon pollution produced by existing power plants, which are the single largest source of carbon-based pollution.  Most electricity in the U.S. comes from coal-burning power plants.

Weeper of the House John Boehner was predictably singing from the Big Coal/Big Energy hymnal when he said, "The president's plan is nuts."  I've found that if the Orange Boner is vehemently opposed to something, then it's probably a good idea.  So I'm convinced that Boehner's determination to preserve the  status quo is what's actually nuts.  Continued blind-faith reliance on fossil fuels is what's actually nuts.  Erecting barriers to alternative energy sources is what's actually nuts.  (Here in Ohio, SB 310 is what's actually nuts.)

There's no such thing as "clean coal."  That's kind of like a "safe cigarette" -- just marketing bullshit.  Coal-burning power plants are on their way out, and the sooner the better.  In the short-run, there will probably be more natural gas-burning power plants (friggin' frackers, rejoice!).  Gas is cleaner than coal, but it still emits carbon, it still adds to global warming, and it's still a non-renewable fossil fuel.  It's preferable to coal in the same way getting smacked in the face once is preferable to getting smacked in the face twice.

The energy future is wind and solar.  Boehner and the righties want to scare us into postponing that future.  The transition away from coal will, they say (and stop me if you've heard this one before), raise prices and cost jobs.  Pretty scary, right?  So let's be safe and do absolutely nothing.

Jobs lost in the non-renewable, carbon-emitting energy industry will be more than offset by job growth in the New Energy future.  It costs less to generate electricity with wind and solar than with coal/gas-burning installations.  To deny these facts is to live in a dream world and delay the inevitable.  The EPA's proposal is a good start.  Let's get on with it.

Joe Manchin can piss and moan all he wants, but if he really believes West Virginia is going to dig coal eternally, then he's nuts.  Energy policy is undergoing a natural evolution born of knowledge and necessity.  One analogy might be the states whose economies were once heavily dependent on tobacco farming.  Another older one might be those states whose economies were once utterly reliant on slave labor.  Those economies thrived for awhile, but then, for a whole lot of really good reasons, they didn't.

Those states didn't shrivel and die.  They adapted to new realities and moved on, and were better for it.  To do otherwise would be . . . nuts!