By William O'Keefe

CEO, George C. Marshall Institute

Are EPA rules the reason the coal industry is declining? Or is natural gas and other market forces the cause? The very short answer is YES!

EPA’s new clean air rules are likely to become a course in the Law of Unintended Consequences. Although for this Administration and EPA, the unintended consequences will be the intended outcome. There is no subtlety to the Administration’s hostility to fossil energy. EPA has been carrying out the President’s objective with zest and vigor.

By John E. Sununu

Miner Allen Turner sits on his porch with his four children in Cawood, Ky. (ASSOCIATED PRESS/FILE 2006)

WHO SAYS President Obama doesn’t have an energy policy? Last month it was boldly on display as the Environmental Protection Agency published rules restricting CO2 emissions for power plants. Coupled with dramatic limits on mercury emissions issued in December, the new rules will fundamentally reshape power generation in America. Aside from the 15 plants already under construction, there will probably never be another coal-fired electric plant built in the United States.

Here in West Virginia and Ohio, we are well aware of the importance to our economies of coal and electricity from coal-fired power plants. And many area residents understand full well that if President Obama's administration is allowed to proceed with its war against coal, our monthly utility bills will skyrocket.

Clearly, that is not the situation everywhere, as Sen. Joe Manchin is coming to understand.

Manchin and a few other coal-state senators have been waging a lonely battle against the White House and its Environmental Protection Agency. This week, Manchin vowed once again to keep up the good fight.

"EPA’s claim that the statute contemplates that a permit is never really final is not easily squared with Congress’s clear desire to limit duplication and delay so that commerce would not be disrupted more than necessary. What would be the point of insisting upon expedition in granting permits if a permit isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on and commerce could be interrupted at any time?" U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson

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So now we know that when President Obama says he wants an “all of the above” strategy for energy, “the above” doesn’t include the energy source in which America has the biggest advantage over the rest of the world: coal.

Last week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced a new regulation that, if enacted, will effectively outlaw the building of new coal-fired electricity-generation plants. In its proposed rule — which, by the way, is 257 pages long – the agency says it is using a “common-sense approach to reducing CO2 and other [greenhouse-gas] emissions, which by causing climate change, pose a serious threat to public health and welfare.”