Let’s get this right. We send $600 billion U.S. dollars a year to foreign countries for oil because we don’t want to destroy our environment by drilling here. But, we mine coal here and send it to foreign countries because we don’t want to burn it here. Mining coal does far more damage to the environment than drilling for oil. Peabody Coal the biggest coal producer in the U.S. now gets 50% of it’s profit from exports. China built 96,000 megawatts of coal-fired plants last year. This equals all of Britain’s coal plants. China is putting up coal plants at the rate of one every other week. India plans to build 75,000 megawatts of coal power by 2012.
About 30 coal-fired power plants are under construction around the U.S. the most in a generation. But, 50 have been cancelled since both candidates for president favor cap and trade which will tax these plants and raise cost by 30%
So, we export coal to countries and watch electrical rates go up as natural gas prices go up and nuclear plants go out of service and mandated wind and solar come in at two to seven times the cost of nuclear.
Can we really afford to export any form of energy in this country? Coal can be converted to liquid fuel. We will need this sooner rather than later.
Almost every wind and solar farm in this country under construction is being challenged by the environmentalists. They don’t want the transmission lines and they object to the birds being killed by the windmills.
This country is truly certifiable. We should be collectively committed to a place where we each get a wheel like a gerbil and have to tread on it until we create the same amount of energy that one person outside the asylum uses. Let me correct that , I will exclude every American who understands we can’t run this country on dreams. If you buy the idea that we need to get about using every form of energy we have at our disposal and do it in an environmentally sound way. Those who don’t buy this get to work the wheel until they do understand that energy creation takes work and action on some one’s part.
It’s crazy. We must keep our scarce resources at home. We can’t continue to send China and India our coal. We are going to need it.
