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Coal industry receives new jolt directly from White House

While America’s world-leading coal industry is already under the multiple extinction attempts by the Environmental Protection Agency, the Sierra Club, and other assorted pressure groups, attempting to put this highly-valued national resource totally out of business, the Administration has chosen this critical period of debt/deficit/foreign policy showdowns to engender another body blow to the dethroned “King Coal.”

The latest Administration requirement attack against this reeling resource sector, on which 37% of electric power utilities still depends, literally forces coal totally out of the electric utility sector. With EPA given the marching orders to enforce President Barack Obama’s orders within the next year, this plan is sure to be implemented. Since “climatological purity” is the President’s number one priority, the next step could very well be the closure of coal mines, during his second term presidency. This would not only impact and cost-effect America’s overall electric utility system, but would shut the door to multi-billion dollars of coal exports, eagerly sought-after by China, India, and other developing nations in the Far East.

This anticipation of the extinction of America’s invisible natural resource would also torpedo the ability of coal usage in the conversion of iron ore to steel, as the latter is struggling to maintain its sagging business levels in a soft world commodity market. Although the closure of coal mines has not yet begun to take place, high level Washington sources indicate that major “mine disasters,” which have unfortunately occurred in China and other parts of the world, not equating America’s high safety standards, would be the tip-off that strangulating new regulations for closing coal mines are on the way.

Despite a plea from a weak “coal lobby,” citing the evolution of clean coal as a counterpoint on occasional TV ads, President Obama has privately indicated that strict limits on “coal CO² and greenhouse gases emanation” will be his primary second term goal, as he has indicated that the failure of “cap-and-trade,” mercifully capsized by a mid-term 2010 GOP House victory, was his greatest presidential disappointment so far.

Source: voices.mydesert.com