Environmental experts who remain unimpressed with President Barack
Obama's war-on-carbon rhetoric point to one key reason for concern
that's off most Americans' radar: U.S. coal exports.
A push to expand
coal mining operations in the Powder River Basin of Montana and
Wyoming, and to build three ports in Oregon and Washington to ship the
fuel to Asia, could create more national and global environmental impact
than a Canadian company's proposal to ferry Albertan tar sands to the
U.S. Gulf Coast via the Keystone XL
pipeline. Yet these remote projects are not getting the attention they
deserve, critics suggest, and they fear Obama may be overlooking,
apathetic to, or even supportive of them.
"If we were serious about doing something about global warming, the
federal government certainly wouldn't be talking about controlling the
burning of coal in the U.S. on the one hand while encouraging the export
of coal to the rest of the world to be burned," said Thomas M. Power,
research professor and professor emeritus of economics at the University
of Montana in Missoula.
"There's certainly a contradiction there," he added, "where the left
hand doesn't know, or pretends it doesn't know, what the right hand is
doing."
The centerpiece of the climate plan Obama unveiled in June
was a pledge to reign in the global-warming emissions of U.S.
coal-fired power plants. Experts predict tightening controls will end up
closing more plants and further troubling the U.S. coal industry, which
experienced significant declines during Obama's first term.
However, U.S. coal exports during that same time more than doubled, according to a June report from the Department of Energy.....
Environmental experts who remain unimpressed with President Barack
Obama's war-on-carbon rhetoric point to one key reason for concern
that's off most Americans' radar: U.S. coal exports.
A push to expand
coal mining operations in the Powder River Basin of Montana and
Wyoming, and to build three ports in Oregon and Washington to ship the
fuel to Asia, could create more national and global environmental impact
than a Canadian company's proposal to ferry Albertan tar sands to the
U.S. Gulf Coast via the Keystone XL
pipeline. Yet these remote projects are not getting the attention they
deserve, critics suggest, and they fear Obama may be overlooking,
apathetic to, or even supportive of them.
"If we were serious about doing something about global warming, the
federal government certainly wouldn't be talking about controlling the
burning of coal in the U.S. on the one hand while encouraging the export
of coal to the rest of the world to be burned," said Thomas M. Power,
research professor and professor emeritus of economics at the University
of Montana in Missoula.
"There's certainly a contradiction there," he added, "where the left
hand doesn't know, or pretends it doesn't know, what the right hand is
doing."
The centerpiece of the climate plan Obama unveiled in June
was a pledge to reign in the global-warming emissions of U.S.
coal-fired power plants. Experts predict tightening controls will end up
closing more plants and further troubling the U.S. coal industry, which
experienced significant declines during Obama's first term.
However, U.S. coal exports during that same time more than doubled, according to a June report from the Department of Energy.....
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