Saturday letters
Mitt Romney and coal in today’s letters to the editor.
Pick of the day: Cutting welfare isn’t mean and heartless
A common and recently rehashed argument against libertarians and conservatives in general is that they want to reduce and alter state welfare, which must mean they are heartless pigs trying to make the rich richer.
Liberals seem not to believe that there is a different motive behind these cuts — that promoting welfare is different than providing for it, that this land promises freedom, not equal outcome. There are other countries that cater to that.
Does that mean welfare in general is wrong? Of course not.
But the federal government is a proven expert at wasting money on programs, social or otherwise.
Private organizations, like the welfare branch of Mitt Romney’s church, on the other hand, help people efficiently without engendering dependence, and allow people to choose how best to use more of their own money.
Politicians redistributing other people’s money is not synonymous with compassion on their part, and advocating state welfare reduction is not synonymous with greed.
JOSH GARDNER
BUENA VISTA
October 13, 2012 - 7:30 AM
NOTE TO BILLY MARTIN (“Anti-coal policies hurt Virginia families”): The is no “War on Coal.”
To quote the Charleston (WV) Gazette:
“Cheap Marcellus gas undercut coal, causing electric utilities to switch power plants to cleaner-burning gas. Utility demand already was low because last winter’s abnormal warmth left power plants with unused stockpiles of coal.
“Thick Appalachian coal seams mostly are exhausted, leaving only thin, difficult, expensive reserves. Chinese steel mills abruptly reduced their imports of high-grade metallurgical coal from America.
“Federal projections estimate that output from Central Appalachian mines will fall from 186 million tons in 2010 to 72 million in 2024. Some miners, coal owners and politicians blame pollution controls for this decline, but environmental regulation is a small factor compared to larger market forces.”
To #2 (Chuck): Actually, there is a war on coal. It’s happening on two fronts.
The first is in the marketplace, where you are quite correct: Coal is being pushed aside by natural gas. The new fracking technologies have been so enormously successful that it’s now cheaper to produce electricity with natural gas rather than coal. This is the first time in history that this has been true.
However, if you look at the EPA’s new rule on carbon emissions for new power stations (which require that they produce less than 1000 lbs of CO2 per megawatt-hour of electricity produced), one can only conclude that the EPA is anti-coal. Meeting this requirement is impossible for a coal-fired station unless it somehow achieves a thermal efficiency of 75% or implements carbon-capture-and-sequestration (CCS) technology. Given that the best coal-fired stations out there only run at a thermal efficiency of 44% and that CCS has never been implemented on a single power station (and will be enormously expensive if it ever is), new coal-fired power stations have effectively been outlawed.
Right now, the new EPA policy doesn’t matter anyway. But note that gas producers are actively seeking to export their product to other countries, where they can get a much higher price. If this happens, look for domestic gas prices to go back up to global norms, and for coal to become competitive again. Or if the EPA cracks down on fracking (as many environmentalists are demanding), prices could go back up. In either of these situations, it would be nice to have the fallback of using coal to keep electricity prices down, but the EPA’s new carbon rules will forbid it.
So yes, you’re correct: Market forces are responsible for current job losses in the coal industry. And Billy Martin is correct: The EPA is waging war on coal.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/how-much-carbon-will-the-epas-new-power-plant-rules-actually-cut/2012/03/27/gIQAuaTDeS_blog.html
Or, you could say that the EPA is waging war against dirty pollution that harms people and the environment and coal has become the buggy whip makers.
Acknowledging that they do not have a way to make coal clean, the EPA is not shutting down existing coal fired plants who will ostensibly need coal for as long as they operate.
It is the age old problem. We no longer have a thriving horse buggy maker and blacksmith in every village either.
“US coal exports increased rapidly in 2011, returning to levels not seen since the early 1990s, and accelerating to keep up with rapidly rising global demand.
The U.S. is the world’s fourth-largest source of coal exports in the world…
…It was reported in 2012 that coal exports in the United States were on track to set a new annual record.”
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=U.S._coal_exports
What should be a competition between coal & natural gas is being skewed by the Obama administration’s political war on coal.
Mr. Lindholm is correct, this can only result in undue increases in natural gas prices.
The analogy to “buggy whips”, etc., are bogus. Coal is a feasible energy source that should very much be part of a comprehensive energy approach (“policy”?).
The left is doing to coal what they did to nuclear energy.
5 – Yes indeed…and once they’re finished eliminating coal, they’ll double down on natural gas (fracking). It never ends.
Actually, what is “bogus’ is the claim that coal is still “a feasible energy source” in this day and age of knowledge about the reality of climate change and the effect of pollution.
Until such time as we can find that elusive “clean coal technology”, we cannot continue to rely on coal and protect an industry that harms us. How much is clean air worth? I think we owe it to the mining industry to keep working on the solutions that include them, but not accepting their limitations and offense is just more of the belligerent, often partisan, thinking that has no idea how to replace Iowa either.
Natural gas will, no doubt be exploited to make the profits bigger once coal is eliminated and that is the nature of the free market. But it remains cleaner and therefore a better choice as of now. But I am no bigger fan of fracking than dirty coal.
Frankly, I think our concentration in power generation should be on nuclear and green solutions, both of which we are capable of and will create jobs as well.
Brian, does it not even phase you that even as the market forces hurt coal, it is played as a political issue and even in admitting that demagoguery, you claim that it is only a matter of time?
It is only a matter of time until we are all dead. But there is a hell of a lot of technology, ingenuity and research to be done in the mean time. The EPA is NOT closing down coal plants, only not allowing new ones until the technology allows for coal to meet the emission standards that protect us. You know the “us” that is supposed to matter more than money or profits? Oh that’s right we don’t.
To #7 (Sandi): You’re correct. The EPA is not shutting down currently-operating coal-fired stations. I’ve never said otherwise. However, the industry was looking to replace a number of older stations. These older station run at only 25% thermal efficiency and have no scrubbers installed, which means that they release 1.8X as much CO2 and 20X as much sulfur, NOx, etc. as a new station would.
All of these replacement plans came to a screeching halt when the new EPA rules were announced. Our oldest coal-fired stations, with their low efficiencies and lack of modern pollution controls, will continue to run. Chinese coal stations are cleaner than American stations, because they’re willing to modernize. Here in America we cannot because the EPA set a goal for new/replacement coal-fired stations that is too high to meet.
I know that the goal was to reduce pollution, but in reality it is impeding progress.
And please, don’t presume you know what fazes me and what does not. From your recent postings, it’s quite apparent you don’t understand my writing style or my motivations at all. All I did in comment #2 was provide a more complete picture, and you rant at me about politics, which I scarcely mentioned. Is everything about politics for you?
[Kudos on the call for more nuclear power in #6, though. Even though you're breaking with many of your liberal peers in making such a statement, it's absolutely the right call.]
Brian, good catch on my improper use of “phase” for “faze”, and yes, I admit I am often baffled by your writing style and I cannot always place your motivations. You remain very hard for me to decipher frankly.
You KNOW a conversation with the letters EPA in it is political. You just like to pretend otherwise apparently.