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By One Citizen
Last Saturday (July 18), around 400 of your neighbors gathered at the state Capitol Culture Center for a protest and town hall meeting regarding the harm that cap and trade legislation will do us. Although Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV 2nd), expressed concern about losing West Virginia coal jobs, she apparently never explained how it will do so. I missed the event, but I've read all the reports that I could find, and even though it was far better covered than any anti-mtr protests, I'm willing to bet that no one will ever get around to asking Capito what makes her think that cap and trade will cost WV coal mining jobs. Because it won't. It may, however, help us to gain "green" industry jobs.
I remember when the airborne fly ash (aka "coal ash") around the John Amos power plant near St. Albans was so thick that you couldn't open your car window while driving for fear of being blinded. Back then industry stooges ...er "experts" warned politicians that cleaning fly ash from the air would skyrocket costs and lose jobs. And although exactly the same arguments were used against acid rain mitigation laws, the fact is that none of their dire warnings ever amounted to any more than hollow scare tactics. Because when lawmakers finally stopped the coal fired power industry from being bad corporate neighbors, the cost of electricity never really shot up. Yet entire "green"industries have sprung up since that coal ash legislation. In WV, though, not so much, largely due to extreme anti-"green" tunnel vision of our coal-powered politicians.
The point of cap-and-trade is to cap carbon emissions to mitigate pollution. Simply figure out how to stop polluting and you won't have to pay the tax. So if coal is really as clean as Rep, Capito told us during her campaign, then just why would anyone need to protest?
The bill requires power plants, factories, refineries and electricity and natural gas distributors to reduce the emissions linked to global warming. It also calls for more power production from renewable sources such wind and solar energy, and raises energy-efficiency standards. source
Instead of wasting millions to lobby and buy politicians to lie about how "clean" coal is, wouldn't it make far more sense to develop a method to make coal "clean" and then manufacture and export it?
BTW Rep Capito has collected $263,290 from the coal industry so far to shill their bogus "Coal is Clean" shinola, so you'll never see her at a town hall meeting expressing her "concern" over the loss of tens of thousands of deep mining jobs in WV due to the expansion of surface mining.
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