In testimony to a congressional subcommittee in October 2011, the American Coal Council noted that an increasing number of coal generators were shutting down their power plants because they couldn’t meet environmental objectives:
“Why are some folks gleeful about that?” asked ACC’s CEO Janet Gellici in her prepared testimony. “Where is the satisfaction in having our nation’s largest electric power providers shut their doors, stop producing low-cost electricity, fire their employees, and still not reach our environmental objectives?
“There can be only one conclusion — that the real objective is not to reduce emissions — that we are really not concerned with meeting environmental objectives. It would appear that other agendas are in play here, agendas to eliminate coal generation from our energy portfolio simply because it is based on coal.”
In mid-December 2012 — two weeks before Lisa Jackson announced her resignation under pressure — the EPA’s inspector general announced it is auditing the agency’s email records to “determine whether EPA follows applicable laws and regulations when using private and alias email accounts to conduct official business.”
Jackson left her job on Feb. 15. Her deputy, Bob Perciasepe, is now acting EPA administrator. Perciasepe served as a senior EPA official in the Clinton administration, and later he worked as chief operating officer at the National Audubon Society, one of the world’s leading environmental organizations.
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