From Michael Patrick Leahy: President Obama’s “War on Coal” has made it so difficult for electricity producers to use that the percentage of our nation’s electricity coming from coal has plunged from 44% last year to 36% this year.
This forced reduction in a critical source of electrical power has more than cancelled out the dramatic reduction in the price of natural gas, another major source of our electrical power. As a result, for the first time in over two decades, electricity rates around the country are rising this summer.
Back in January, 2008, when coal accounted for 49% of our electrical power generation, candidate Barack Obama was caught on audio tape making this statement:
What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.
I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.
So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.
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