Coal Country Gets a Chance to Testify About the Impact of Climate Policies
A favored tactic of radical environmentalists is to characterize anyone who questions their orthodoxy as “climate change deniers,” suggesting that those who dare to raise concerns about the impact of draconian climate policies are all part of some flat earth society.
Actor Leonardo DiCaprio, a favorite of the environmental left who has enough gravitas to be invited to the United Nations and the White House to talk climate change, even suggested this week that people who don’t believe in climate change “should not be allowed to hold public office.”
Perhaps someone should turn DiCaprio’s logic on him; does someone who generates a massive carbon footprint with private jets and enormous yachts have the moral standing to carry the torch for climate change?
James Hansen, the former NASA climate scientist and favorite of the climate doomsday congregation, says fixing the weather should not be relegated to the people’s representatives. He now advocates massive litigation where the courts will force the fossil fuel industry to contribute toward the “100s of trillions of dollars” he expects it will cost to slow the rising of global temperatures.
The problem, however, is that the hard charge by the alleged preventers of climate catastrophe ignore all those who get trampled in the process.
Today, U.S. Senator Shelley Moore Capito, Chairman of the U.S. Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee’s Clean Air and Nuclear Safety Subcommittee, will hold a field hearing in Logan on the impact of the EPA’s climate policies.
Among those testifying will be Bo Copley. He’s the laid-off coal miner from Delbarton who famously confronted Hillary Clinton during a campaign stop in Mingo County about her comments about putting coal miners and coal companies out of business.
Wayne County Commissioner Robert Pasley will also testify about the challenges of paying for public education and basic services when tax collections fall because of the decline of coal.
United Mine Workers of America attorney Eugene Trisko is expected to tell committee members how their research shows the EPA’s Clean Power Plan will mean billions of dollars in lost economic output for West Virginia.
Today the committee will hear about people more than policy. It’s an attempt to demonstrate the impact of these EPA policies on real human beings, West Virginia residents. These folks cannot get an invitation to the White House or command the attention of the international press with their pronouncements, but they are realstories.
Acting Assistant EPA Administrator Janet McCabe said earlier this year that the agency did not want to come here to discuss the President’s climate policies because, “When we were scheduling national level meetings, we wanted to have those in locations where people were comfortable coming.”
If comfort is a prerequisite, then the EPA made the right call. If anything, today’s hearing will be very uncomfortable, but the truth often is.
See the article here.
- On October 5, 2016