With President Barack Obama’s progressive base in an uproar over the National Security Agency (NSA) domestic surveillance programs, Obama seeks to quell angst among his environmental base on Tuesday by declaring war on coal.
“A war on coal is exactly what’s needed,” White House climate adviser Daniel P. Schrag told the New York Times.
Obama’s plan will crack down on emissions even further, give $8 billion in taxpayer money to fund loan guarantees for energy projects, and allocate $7 billion to finance foreign climate mitigation and adaptation projects, reports The Times.
National Mining Association President and CEO Hal Quinn said Obama’s anti-coal policy is wrongheaded, costly to the 76% of Americans living paycheck-to-paycheck, and will continue the already bleak jobs outlook in America.
“Americans are looking for jobs and economic security. Coal power plants generate more electricity and create and sustain more jobs than any other energy source,” said Quinn in a statement. “Our policies need to be aligned with our national interest so that coal continues to create jobs and keeps America competitive.”
Even as global increases in carbon dioxide output have jumped dramatically over the last 15 years, global temperatures have remained largely unchanged. Fox News politics editor Chis Stirewait says Obama’s war on coal is more about throwing a political bone to environmentalists and inoculating himself from further erosion among his base if he decides to go forward with the Keystone Pipeline than it is about slowing the rise of the oceans and healing the planet as he promised in 2008.
“Obama needs something to offer these folks, already unhappy to find out the size of his domestic regime, if he really is going to cave on Keystone,” writes Stirewalt.
Indeed, the biggest supporters of Obama’s war on coal may be the nations like China and Russia, who have no intentions of slowing down coal consumption, says Stirewalt.
“The rest of the world is gobbling up every coal BTU it can get.”