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Also in from CPAC: Fascists, NRA, Trump-istas … and coal enthusiasts

February 23rd, 2018 · 1 Comment

The CPAC meeting has become a gathering of the worst of American and, sigh, global society. Whether white supremacists, gun lunatics, or science deniers, this is a ground central for those enamored with the Trump kakistocracy* and the destruction it is reigning on the United States and humanity.

From CPAC emerges glimpses of the immoral, unethical, corrupt, authoritarian threads that have taken control of “conservative” American politics.  Whether the hosting of French fascist Marion Maréchal-Le Pen or the rantings of the NRA president, thinking people can’t think seriously about CPAC without getting sick to the stomach.

Amid all this comes news about the heartless Heartland Institute, a leader purveyor of climate/tobacco/pesticides science denial gibberish and go-to space for Trump-ista ‘science’ policy concepts.

Heartland announced an initiative to battle the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign,

“We want to make the future as the past was. We are here because of coal, and we need it going forward,” said Fred Palmer, a Heartland fellow who previously worked as an executive at Peabody Energy Corp., America’s largest publicly traded coal company.

Consider that, consider CPAC, consider #MAGA … “we want to make the future as the past was …”

Amid massive technological advances that offer innumerable opportunities for improving economies and societies, Heartland is directly stating that the past is where they want to take us (the US).

There is a simple reality that is lost to many. Donald Trump likes to express his love for miners. While that affirmation of love is likely simply because he ‘loves’ anyone who expresses adoration for him, he cannot deliver.

  • First, for decades, the key objective of mining companies is to get miners out of mining.  From mountain-top removal to huge automated machines in strip mines, fewer miner hours are required for every ton removed.
  • Secondly, even more importantly, coal is dead — even as the pollution continues, virtually every single day brings bad news for coal (e.g., good news for humanity).

Did you know that with Trump in his second year of Oval Office occupation, that coal power plants are being retired at a faster rate in the United States than during President Barack Obama’s Administration. This has nothing to do with some sort of fantasized US government ‘war on coal’ and climate action but everything to do with economics:

“The economics for coal just aren’t working anymore… Coal is not competitive with clean energy anymore, even in Missouri. That’s what regulators will listen to.”

Take a look at real-world bids in ‘coal’ country.

  • It is half the price to buy new solar and wind electricity (even with storage) than it is to build new coal plants.
  • It is cheaper to buy new solar and wind electricity (even with storage) than it is to run existing coal plants.
    • And, by the way, those coal numbers will get worse — the older the plant, the more expensive it becomes due to maintenance and repairs (even without considering upgrades to meet new regulatory requirements).

Those economics are driving change … change to the future not back to a polluting past.

If Heartland’s influence has increased in Washington, the weight of its arguments is on the wane in C-room suites.

Power companies have retired a third of America’s coal-generating capacity since 2010, …

For a perspective, of the coal fleet in 2010, over 50 percent has been retired or is slated for retirement in the near future.

In February alone, two major Midwestern utilities announced plans to dramatically cut back coal generation and replace the retired units with natural gas and renewables. Consumers Energy, a Michigan utility, said this week it will eliminate coal from its fuel mix by 2040. That followed an announcement by American Electric Power Co. that it intends to slash its emissions 80 percent of 2000 levels by midcentury, in part by reducing its coal use.

And in Texas, where power generators are retiring some 4 gigawatts of coal capacity this year, researchers expect wind power to overtake coal as the state’s second largest provider of electricity next year. Texas is the largest domestic market for coal used to generate electricity.

As to Texas,

The simple reality:

“Coal is taking a 1-2-3 punch in the market,”

Heartland is fighting against reality. They are fighting to weaken the US electricity system, to drive higher prices into the US economy, weaken US competitiveness, kill Americans through increased coal pollution, and worsen our climate challenges. Truly, a wonderful agenda for patriotic Americans to pursue.

Truth be told, Heartland — and its fossil-fuel sponsors — will manage to put sand into the gears to move the nation Beyond Coal. They will confuse the system with deceptive analysis, find sympathetic utility commissioners so enamored with Trump-ism that they will buy into higher-cost electricity for their consumers and communities, and otherwise make the work of moving the US energy system into a more efficient, more reliable, more globally competitive, and cleaner future that much harder.

* Kakistocracy: Government by the least ethical, least principled, least competent of society.

 

Tags: coal · Cost-Benefit Analysis

1 response so far ↓

  • 1 John Egan // Feb 26, 2018 at 10:35 am

    When you place coal companies, coal workers, coal communities, and people dependent upon coal energy – 30%; which is still 5.5 times wind and 10 times solar – you only show how ignorant you truly are.

    Okay, coal is 30% … down from over 50% less than a decade ago … and it is falling rapidly … And, that wind is more than doubled in that time period, solar up nearly order of magnitude. If you take that static, your numbers look great / impressive, if you project out reasonably a decade out, well, no …

    Just as with the skewed attacks on Clinton re coal country, you will happily ignore / put aside that I’ve long proposed that there should be major development / investment going into coal communities more rapidly/ahead of the declining coal curves. And, that we should treat coal miners / communities as ‘heroes’ (e.g., with resources to help improve their lives — whether bulked up pensions, additional wages to salaries in new positions, or …) who have sacrificed to help power the nation but as a sacrifice that is increasingly not required due to new options.

    James Hanson did the same thing in his comparison of coal trains to the Nazi death trains that took millions of Jews to exterminations camps such as Auschwitz and Treblinka. His comment provoked a shocked response for which he offered a lukewarm semi-apology.

    Your twisting of Hansen is in line with everything else in your online commentary … taking tidbits and skewing them into extremes. The “shocked” was primarily from, no surprise, those who attack climate science and whose financial interests are threatened by acting to address climate change … like coal executives. Romm addressed it reasonably.

    That said, “boxcars headed to crematoria” is a very loaded phrase, inevitably conjuring up the Nazi’s extermination of the Jews, a connection everyone, including Hansen, should be cautious about making. [I actually can’t think of a good analogy for what global warming may do to this planet?—?it is so far beyond anything that has happened in human history.]

    Still, I don’t think an apology is necessary, especially to the NMA, which here offers no statement recognizing either the dangers of global warming or its own culpability?—?which is great, since it has devoted considerable effort to blocking action on global warming over the years.

    And then you wonder why Democrats are losing. West Virginia,

    Of course, everything is ‘greenies’ — nothing about identity politics, racism, etc … No, all about environmentalists/clean energy proponents/understanders of climate science implications who are trying to address an existential threat.

    Pennsylvania, Iowa, Wisconsin, even Michigan. You make think it is oh-so-cute to put fascists and coal in the same title

    It was CPAC who put fascists and coal proponents in the same venue, on the same stage … and, well, you seem to see that as perfectly acceptable …

    (even though 90% of your post is about coal and 50% wrong) but it only serves to underscore how the climate left has destroyed the Democratic coalition over the past decade.

    So, we have people like you, Adam, to thank for Trump, the GOP Congress, overwhelming GOP majorities in 2/3s of the states, and a federal judiciary that will be right-wing for the next generation.

    You never write, do you, about GOP voter suppression (which almost certainly accounted for Wisconsin for Trump 2016 and Johnson wins there), never a syllable about Putin/Russian interference, nothing about Citizens United, nothing about the massive amounts of resources spent to foster climate science confusion & denial, nothing … No, everything is your skewed ‘it is all those greenies’ fault’. Your diatribes are skewed, tired, and destructive.

    Thank you.