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EPA’s War on Coal Nearly Over

  • Writer: kenlake5
    kenlake5
  • Jun 4, 2014
  • 2 min read

I grew up in Southeast Ohio halfway between Columbus and Wheeling (if you don’t know where Wheeling is you won’t get this piece at all so just quit reading). It wasn’t exactly coal country but we did have some local surface mining operations and the co-op elevator where I had my first job catered to some of them by supplying seed and fertilizer to their reclamation operations.

I spent my summers camping, fishing and exploring the un-reclaimed areas owned by American Electric Power. Those areas continue to offer outdoor recreation to thousands of visitors annually.

My grandfather moved to Ohio, to farm, from West Virginia around the turn of the century. The part of WVA he moved from was primarily coal and timber country and some of that land is still owned by the family. I recall a visit to the area 30 years ago where we visited and old “neighbor” who heated his home with coal he dug by hand from the hillside beside his house. My ties there are pretty strong.

That’s why the EPA’s recent Clean Power Plan is particularly troublesome to me.

Troublesome because not only is a traditional American Industry is being destroyed, so is a way of life. And for the sake of what? The controlling of greenhouse gas emissions? So that developing countries can take advantage of us by not having similar standards and manufacturing goods cheaper than that of US companies then exporting those goods to the US and destroying additional US industries and jobs?

Look, a clean power plan is a noble and worthy cause and one that, in this country, has been debated and compromised over for years. Like all things political the winners are the ones who spend the most money lobbying, the ones who take advantage of the current wave of public sentiment and the ones who play the game effectively with only personal regard and little empathy for the ones they destroy.

It will take generations before we know if the Clean Power Plan worked.

For now EPA’s war on coal is nearly over and Coal has lost.


 
 
 

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