This development should come as no surprise. President Obama promised he would end the coal industry if he was elected president, saying in San Francisco in 2008 “if somebody wants to build a coal plant, they can — it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they are going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
Never before has the President of the United States been so determined to bankrupt an industry that employs hundreds of thousands of Americans. And, it’s a promise he has been keeping according to the AP:
More than 32 mostly coal-fired power plants in a dozen states will be forced to shut down and an additional 36 might have to close because of new federal air pollution regulations, according to an Associated Press survey.While it’s clear that thousands of jobs in the industry will be lost as a result of President Obama’s actions, the impact goes beyond coal. No one knows how many businesses will shutter or how much money will be removed from the US economy due to the of soaring energy costs that will of course follow the loss of America’s most abundant energy resource.
Next time someone tries to tell you that President Obama isn’t hostile to job creators, you should tell them about coal. It is an American tragedy.
