Republicans love coal so much they eat it for breakfast.
Do Republicans really want to live on a planet — the only one we’ve got, by the way — where the air is choking us and the water is poisoning us (this is literally happening in parts of the U.S.) and storms from climate change are rendering parts of the U.S. nearly uninhabitable? Because that’s happening right now, yet they want us to stop doing anything about it.
It’s within our power to stop polluting, to stop trashing our planet, but for some reason this is considered something that only concerns liberal people, as if only progressives need air to breathe. Strong, manly Republicans can breath dirty air and drink poisoned water and withstand Category 7 Hurricanes. This is what they would have you think — that we can survive increasing pollution that is adding arsenic and barium and selenium and benzine and mercury to our water and food supplies. Maybe their strong, muscular and hairy women can survive these toxins too, but what about their children? Even Republican children are vulnerable to poison and filthy air.
All facetiousness aside, these attacks on our home land (the real Homeland is Planet Earth, not the U.S.) need to be stopped. Look at what Republicans are doing to our very ability to live on this planet. They are blocking all climate change legislation and even trying to block EPA pollution regulations across the country.
All members of Congress (including Blue Democrats) really have to do is stop accepting money from Big Oil and Big Coal lobbyists and do the right thing — shut down coal plants and vote to encourage renewable energy. Pollution and dirty energy also deeply affects health care, because the more pollution allowed into our environment, the more sick people end up in emergency rooms unable to breath. The leader of the Congressional liars about climate change and environmental issues is Senator James Inhofe. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) isn’t much better. Murkowski said yesterday (via E&E Daily, subscription only) that she would not consider voting for the climate package without drilling in ANWR. “I’m still saying ANWR is one of the must-haves,” Murkowski said. She believes in drilling for as much oil as we can, and to hell with the planet. Who needs a planet to live on, anyway? Socialist Liberals, that’s who.
Inhofe is a dishonest snake, a man who has no conscience whatsoever. He wants his grandchildren to live in a garbage dump, which is what the country will be if the Republicans get their way. He is on a veritable crusade to destroy the EPA and any pollution controls.
[Sen. Inhofe's] Minority Report released by Inhofe’s staff contains 83 pages of false and misleading statements, shameful accusations, and a list of federal laws allegedly broken that threatens 17 climate scientists with prosecution. In other words, this is the worst case of political thuggery since Senator Joseph McCarthy first employed these tactics 60 years ago.
The writer below spells out what we are facing in the Congress and right-wing attacks on our ability to breath and drink and survive. Unfortunately the writer believes in the myth of clean coal. I don’t, because it doesn’t exist. The only clean coal is the coal left in the ground. But Republicans in Congress are worse because they think we can survive unlimited pollution. To be blunt, I don’t appreciate a bunch of greedy snake-oil selling political operatives telling me that living with coal is a fact of life and dirty air is something we have to put up with. Coal is killing us and that should piss us all off.
Bruce Niles reports on the attacks on the Clean Air Act. He ends with a call to action so you can get involved too.
Stop the Attacks on the Clean Air Act
A Senate vote is looming on a measure that would gut the Clean Air Act, proposed by Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski. The resolution’s passage would give big polluters a bail out by blocking President Obama and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) from taking action to limit global warming pollution – even from the biggest polluters like coal plants and oil refineries.
Despite evidence that this measure was crafted by lobbyists who represent coal giants like Southern Company, Duke and Progress Energy, it is still gaining support in the Senate, and there are now similar measures in the House.
Major industrial facilities, including the nation’s more than 500 existing coal plants, are responsible for almost 70% of our country’s global warming pollution. Addressing the pollution from these sources is a key part of the big picture solution to global warming and energy independence. The agency has laid out a reasonable timeline for new regulations for these massive polluters and proposed measures that would require the biggest polluters to clean up first, so pollution would be quickly reduced without affecting smaller sources like small businesses, churches and apartment buildings.
Under EPA’s common sense plan, new coal plants and other large facilities would have to install global warming pollution controls, much as they already do for other forms of pollution. . . . .
OK — here he talks about how coal plants can become “clean” with all sorts of equipment added to them, but it will never happen, and it does not need to happen. Coal is finite. It’s filthy and dirty and it’s killing Americans and people all around the world, right now, and it’s running out. There is no need to use the last few chunks of something as deadly as coal. Also, there is no equipment in development that could remove all the toxins and poisons that coal spews out when burned. It just does not exist and never will. The closest they can come is to install some very, very expensive equipment on coal plants that will help the problem, but won’t solve it, and it will increase your electric bill to the point where you can’t pay it. So WHY BOTHER? Back to Niles:
EPA is merely doing what the Clean Air Act already requires–and what it was ordered to do almost three years ago by the Supreme Court. The public overwhelmingly supports the move, and yet Senator Murkowski and other friends of big polluters ignore the science, the public outcry, and the unintended, far reaching damage done by gutting one of country’s most effective environmental laws.
Big Coal and Oil are lining up supporters behind these efforts to gut the Clean Air Act, so we need to send a clear message that the public does not want Congress to dismantle these fundamental American environmental protections. Please join us in defending the Clean Air Act by sending a message to Congress today – just click here. You can also show your support by becoming a fan of the Clean Air Act on Facebook.
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