Coal-fired power plants provide half of this country's electricity.
Half. Considering coal is by far our cheapest fossil fuel, imagine how
expensive -- and unreliable -- electrical power would be if every
coal-fired plant in the United States were shut down and use of the
resource were banned.
Las Vegas Review-Journal - Editorial - April 15, 2008
Coal-fired power plants provide half of this country's electricity. Half. Considering coal is by far our cheapest fossil fuel, imagine how expensive -- and unreliable -- electrical power would be if every coal-fired plant in the United States were shut down and use of the resource were banned.
Such a scenario, which would lay waste to America's economy and quality of life, is the stuff of dreams for environmentalists. And they're doing everything they can to make it a reality.
The greens have a network of well-paid lawyers and activists dedicated to hunting down and killing every new coal-fired power plant proposal in the United States. In Nevada and every other state, they attend all public hearings in force, carefully track regulatory and approval processes, apply political pressure at every step, and ultimately sue. Coupled with one of the most relentless and effective lobbying coalitions in Washington, environmentalists are preventing the expansion of the country's power supply, making energy increasingly unaffordable for the masses.
"We hope to clog up the system," David Bookbinder, the Sierra Club's chief climate counsel, told the Los Angeles Times.
Their efforts are grounded in the belief that coal-fired plants, which produce carbon dioxide, are a driving force behind man-caused global warming, a subject of unsettled scientific debate.
Their biggest victory was scored in October, when Kansas Secretary of Health and Environment Rod Bremby quashed plans for two 700-megawatt, coal-fired generating stations at the request of the Sierra Club. That a single political appointee could single-handedly sabotage years of planning and hundreds of millions of dollars in investment frightened utilities from coast to coast.
"If I am the CEO of my state, I do not want to run out of electricity," Michael Morris, CEO of American Electric Power, told State Legislatures magazine in response to the Kansas debacle. "This is not a doomsday scenario. You can pick a time line in different states of three, four, five or eight years. Whatever the situation, the threat of an energy crisis is a very real thing."
Indeed, Nevada's demand for electricity has grown 230 percent faster than the rest of the country, and is expected to double in less than a decade. Yet Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., has embraced the greens' view and promised to do everything in his power to block the construction of new coal-fired power plants that burn twice as clean as older stations.
Renewable power sources, such as solar and wind power, aren't capable of meeting peak summer demands, let alone producing the "baseload" generation that allows people to turn on their lights or television whenever they want.
So what can one conclude from environmentalists' insistence that coal be removed from the country's energy portfolio? That their focus has moved from reducing pollution to abolishing human development and prosperity.
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