5-20-16 THE WAR ON COAL – IN THE NEWS TODAY

  “Wake Up Consumers: Government Regulation Is Making You Poorer!”

Commentary by

Dave Harbour

 “First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Socialist.     

     Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—because I was not a Trade Unionist.

     Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—Because I was not a Jew.

     Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.”  -Pastor Martin Niemöller

Gregory Boyce

Today, we remember meeting Gregory Boyce at a meeting of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners in 2011.  At that time coal was the least expensive way to create electricity aside from legacy hydroelectric dams, and consumers received about 40% of total US electricity from consumer friendly, low cost coal fired power production.  Since then, coal use has become much cleaner, yet the federal government with its propensity for overreaching its jurisdiction (i.e. the EPA) has taken steps such as those described below to initiate a war on coal designed to actually kill that consumer-friendly source of power.

Aubrey McClendon

Unfortunately, some in the natural gas industry have joined the coal lynch mob purely to stimulate natural gas demand and profitability.  At the meeting described above, the late chairman of Chesapeake Natural Gas, Aubrey McClendon, argued against use of coal.

As chairman of the Western Association of Public Utility Commissioners Gas Committee, I frequently urged all energy industries to advocate their own benefits without imitating political negative campaigning techniques!  Why?  Because such in-fighting does not benefit or better protect consumers.

In the Paris climate change meetings late last year, twenty major oil companies joined in the war on coal. They piously called themselves the Oil & Gas Climate Initiative.  We believed it to be yet another patently self serving, flanking attack designed to both reduce competition from coal while soliciting favor from environmental activists and lubricating access to United Nations “climate change” advocate countries like France, Germany, Canada and the United States.

One can expect that the price for oil company friendship with activists and politicians is money: grants, travel stipends, contributions, etc.  One can also expect that the environmental-governmental-industrial cabal will now exercise greater power over the public interest and consumer pocketbooks.

But what they get for their money and for foolishly putting their shareholder reputations on the climate change bandwagon could be: 1) increased funding for activists who will relentlessly move from attacking coal to attacking natural gas fracking and other projects; 2) losing support from traditional business and conservative political allies.

In short, “They came for coal, and no one spoke out for coal; then, they came for natural gas and oil and there was no one left to speak for them.”

“By coming for low cost natural gas fracking and lower cost coal, they came for the consumers — and and no one noticed.”

Meanwhile money flowed into climate change political and environmental activist war chests and salaries — enriching them at consumer expense.

Epilogue:  We have one last question for our readers.  If everyone ignores the slow destruction of coal; and if we stand by and let it happen to gas; then oil and mining and forestry and commercial fishing and the consumers; what chance do states, provinces and nations have to sustain prosperity of their natural resource-based economies?  Doesn’t this mean that all of the natural resource creators of wealth must continually reach higher environmental and technological standards while sticking together in the battle to do them all in, one by one, not fighting one another.  For the natural resource based economies must join with consumers everywhere to fight what amount to anarchist efforts that will deprive civilization of its basic, affordable fuels we depend upon to sustain the large, growing populations of the world.  -dh