Congressman Raul Grijalva takes to the New York Times opinion page to challenge Republican lawmakers over their reluctance to help modernize coal-burning power plants:

It’s not that simple, and my colleagues help no one by pretending otherwise. Coal companies are struggling largely because domestic coal is not economically competitive with the country’s cheap and abundant natural gas. That would be true no matter who was president or what climate quality standards we had in place.

The “blame Obama” argument essentially boils down to ignoring economics and pretending that the implementation schedule for the Clean Power Plan, which requires mandatory emissions reductions beginning in 2022, is a bureaucratic overreach rather than the compromise it represents. (The original implementation date was 2020.)

Coal’s would-be friends in Washington have decided to bash the administration and defend the status quo rather than offer a way forward. They’ve also largely ignored legislative attempts to help the industry comply with incoming climate standards. It’s worth examining why.

Companies will need advanced technologies to meet the new standards. Whether it is capturing carbon at the smokestack or some other method, breakthroughs will be required for coal to stay viable in a new world of emissions rules. If you’re a lawmaker who wants to keep today’s coal industry alive under the Clean Power Plan, standing pat is not an option.

Given that reality, you’d think that support for efforts to reduce coal’s climate-changing emissions would be in the Republican Party’s platform by now. But ask almost any Republican on an environmental committee — or better yet, ask the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, of the coal state of Kentucky — where his or her bill is to support these options, and it’s a good bet you’ll get a blank stare.

That’s because, for all their sound and fury on the importance of American coal mining, some of my colleagues have boxed themselves in so tightly by denying the science of climate change that any solution is impossible for them to support. In the unusual world of climate politics, Republicans who help coal companies reduce their carbon emissions would have to admit that those emissions are a problem worth discussing — and for a variety of reasons, they can’t do that.

This article appears in Nov 12-18, 2015.

Getting hassled by The Man Mild-mannered reporter

15 replies on “Grijalva: GOP Lawmakers Are Destroying the Coal Industry By Denying Climate Change”

  2. hm…. Funny how can you destroy coal industry if you deny climate change. Cause that means less strict emissions.

  3. More scientists are fleeing the global warming prescription as new records show even more cooling. Congress is putting a group of them under oath and will answer a variety of questions before they surrender any more of our economy to the leftinistas.

    “Global warming (i.e, the warming since 1977) is over. The minute increase of anthropogenic CO2 in the atmosphere (0.008%) was not the cause of the warming—it was a continuation of natural cycles that occurred over the past 500 years.”

    Don J. Easterbrook is Professor Emeritus of Geology at Western Washington University. Bellingham, WA. He has published extensively on issues pertaining to global climate change. For further details see his list of publications

    Listening to Mr Grijalva has become about as nonsensical as listening to the President and Mrs Clinton.

    Mr President we’ve got global warming contained. Turns out it was only the JV team. Nothing but widows and orphans.

  5. Sorry but you only need to look at the last 15 years. Everyone’s credibility is at issue here because we have based this on a combination of power, speculation, computer modelling, and government funding. I forgot to add a dash of brainwashing by the liberal media. I’m freezing.

  6. Yes look at the last 15 years. The hottest 15 year period ever.
    Besides anyone who thinks 15 years is long enough to measure a trend in planet-wide warming isn’t worth talking to.
    Easterbrook is part of the 3% of scientists who disagree with the thesis. I’ll stick with the consensus 97% including all the folks at NASA, NOAA, the USGS, etc.

  7. Looking for something to read while waiting for a flight at the airport, I bought “Gray Mountain” by John Grisham – easy to read adventure novel, but with scary descriptions and statistics. Compared to the old days of deep mining, the current corporate coal industry employs far fewer people, strip mines whole mountains using huge heavy equipment, selectively destroys vast areas of forest habitat (rendering it uninhabitable), poisons water tables, and threatens or bullies any opposition with high powered legal teams. Corporate “Big Coal” needs reformed in many ways.

  9. 3%? Take a peak. Don’t try to discredit all so easily.

    http://www.petitionproject.org/

    31,487 American scientists have signed this petition,
    including 9,029 with PhDs

    Are you saying that we have 3.2M climate scientists in the US?

    You say 15 years is not long enough to see a trend, yet 14 years was long enough to declare a coming catastrophe. Interesting science. That’s what that is. I would not want my career destroyed by opposing the masses, but that what you do to varying opinions.

    Much like the kids on college campuses. Mob rule.

  10. NOAA?

    The U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s “statement of two years ago — that the global surface temperature has shown a much smaller increasing linear trend over the past 15 years than over the past 30 to 60 years’ — is no longer valid,” the study claims.

    But that’s not all NOAA did to increase the warming trend in recent decades. Climate expert Bob Tisdale and meteorologist Anthony Watts noted that to “manufacture warming during the hiatus, NOAA adjusted the pre-hiatus data downward.”

    “If we subtract the [old] data from the [new] data… we can see that that is exactly what NOAA did,” Tisdale and Watts wrote on the science blog Watts Up With That.

    “It’s the same story all over again; the adjustments go towards cooling the past and thus increasing the slope of temperature rise,” Tisdale and Watts added. “Their intent and methods are so obvious they’re laughable.”

    Read more: http://dailycaller.com/2015/06/04/noaa-fiddles-with-climate-data-to-erase-the-15-year-global-warming-hiatus/#ixzz3rxWlMynf

    Maybe, just maybe Joni Mitchell had something right. “We paved paradise and put up a parking lot.”

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWwUJH70ubM

    That could be it!

  11. Cheap natural gas is killing coal: Coal’s downfall has been in the making for a long time. Its collapse accelerated after Obama took office, but the White House may not have been the main driver.

    Back in 2009, everyone believed the world was running out of metallurgical coal, or “met coal,” the type that goes into making steel. Prices spiked above $340 a ton as demand from fast-growing China was off the charts.

    Now, met coal prices have crumbled below $100 a ton as China’s economy is no longer enjoying explosive growth, and doesn’t need as much steel or coal. -CNN of all people. Come on Raul, tell the truth.

  13. Raul tell the truth. I like you David, seems like we’re cut from the same cloth, but asking Raul the Fool to tell the truth?? Don’t hold your breath. I remember him from all the way back in his stupidvisors days. If the fat bum ever told the truth he’d break out in hives.

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