Remember: today is Barack Obama’s War On Coal speech.

The only real question is whether Barack Obama will use the actual phrase. Certainly, his administration is trying to get the notion out there:

“The one thing the president really needs to do now is to begin the process of shutting down the conventional coal plants,” Daniel P. Schrag, a member of the President’s Council of Advisers on Science and Technology, told the New York Times. ”Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they’re having a war on coal. On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what’s needed.”

Daniel Schrag is perfect for deniable messaging, of course: he doesn’t set policy, but he does officially have President Barack Obama’s ear.  If he’s openly talking about bankrupting the coal industry – something that Barack Obama has been itching to do for years – then it’s either about to become official federal policy, or else the Obama administration has zero control over its own personnel and friendlies.  I don’t know which scenario is more alarming.

Guess we’ll find out today, huh?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

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11 thoughts on “Remember: today is Barack Obama’s War On Coal speech.”

  1. Coal is a domestic industry, largely staffed by those rubes who cling to their guns and religion, so naturally Obama wants to destroy it.

  2. The irony of a former Senator from Illinois being anti-coal is .. remarkable. “Carbondale, IL”, “Coal City, IL”, “Glen Carbon, IL”…
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    Coal has a long history in the southern half of the State .. and until ComEd went nuke-happy back when nuclear was the future, coal provided a lot of cheap electricity to Chicago.
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    That this will also kneecap West Virginia .. a long-term Dem (and coal) State, is even more ironic… The man half of West Virginia’s infrastructure is named for, Byrd, must be spinning in his grave.
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    The only things on the horizon that could replace coal today, nationally, and that might be acceptable to the greenies, are natural gas and nuclear, and .. today’s greenies are fighting gas pretty hard, and nuclear is so bound up in red tape as to be useless.
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    Mew

    1. Coal still provides a lot of cheap electricity in IL. Spent a few summers back in college doing emissions testing up on the stacks at Chicago area power plants.

    2. Obama just playing up to the environmental kookoo birds. Great thing for fossil fuels is the other side is stupid and lazy. They’d probably run us out of business if they’d do the hard work of getting entreprenuers interested in alternative energy and figure out a way to make it cost competitive with fossil fuels for the consumer but they don’t understand markets and they’d rather run to the gov’t and whine to get regs passed that make energy more expensive for everybody. Nothing quite so encouraging as your opponents being stupid and lazy.

      1. If they had an alternative that were economically viable and scientifically sound, they would probably hate it also. Their key criteria appears to be preferring expensive wastes that they can sell to people. Specifically people who do not fit any of the criteria of a) careful stewards of money to be invested b) having a solid scientific and engineering background honed into sound engineering judgment c) generally pedantic jerks who pay close attention to details and plausibility, and who are not out to make friends.

      2. ‘cept he appears set on killing Keystone as well, tnfriend. It’s not coal, and I note your handle, but .. still.
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        With the previous closing of refineries in the northeast and now cutting off a major source of foreign oil – oil that Canada has said it will sell to the Chinese if we don’t want it – Obama has done precisely *nothing* for the global environment, has pissed on an ally and unions, and has guaranteed gas prices will remain high.
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        He really does seem, as Ace of Spades put it, to be going “full Bullworth”…. and as ignorantly as possible.
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        http://ace.mu.nu/archives/341197.php
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        Mew

  3. President Obama is also set to move the goalposts on Keystone XL (NSFW, I am not in the best of moods right now).
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    Eh, whatever. We have been so thoughly screwed by Obama, there is not much more he can do to us (except maybe give Alaska back to Russia, which I honestly would not put it past him).

  4. Sucks having an incurious, anti-science president hell-bent on forcing his religious beliefs on the rest of us.

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