Obama declared war on coal. And coal won.
When Hillary ran for office, without Obama's identity politics coattails, it was the war on coal that helped defeat her in crucial states. And now the war is ending.
The head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said on Monday he would sign a proposed rule on Tuesday to begin withdrawing from the Clean Power Plan, former President Barack Obama’s centerpiece regulation to fight climate change.
“Here’s the president’s message: The war on coal is over,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt told a gathering in the Kentucky coal-country town of Hazard.
The left is not hugging any trees in response to this outrage.
“No matter who is in the White House, the EPA is legally required to limit dangerous carbon pollution, and the Clean Power Plan is an achievable, affordable way to do that,” said Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune.
Carbon is not a pollutant. No more than you should worry about hydrogen in your water.
"Carbon pollution" is a bizarre orwellian construct that seeks to frighten people who are ignorant by preying on their lack of understanding of science.
The ecoleft creates an imaginary problem that fits their prefered solution (massive deindustrialization and artificial shortages created to cope with a manufactured crisis) and then claims that anything contributing to their imaginary problem is a pollutant. And who cares about science anyway?
Jim Matheson, chief executive of the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, an electric utility group, agreed. He said ending the plan would take pressure off some cash-strapped utilities that still relied on coal-fired power plants. But he said market forces were already moving utilities away from coal.
Then why worry?
The left keeps insisting that history is inevitably on its side. Technology is certainly on its side. Then why not just let it happen?
The left insists that coal is doomed. Then why not just let market forces kill it? Because the goal isn't to achieve environmental targets, but to kill a culture. For the left, culture war always comes first.