{"id":1950,"date":"2008-11-03T02:43:50","date_gmt":"2008-11-03T02:43:50","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-11-03T02:45:07","modified_gmt":"2008-11-03T02:45:07","slug":"obama_and_coal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1950","title":{"rendered":"Obama And Coal"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a lot of heated words on Memeorandum on Obama’s taped conversation with the SF Chronicle about coal, and I think they are unfair.<\/p>\n

Here are some headlines:<\/p>\n

Hidden Audio: Obama Tells SF Chronicle He Will Bankrupt Coal Industry<\/a><\/p>\n

EXPLOSIVE NEW AUDIO– Obama Promises San Francisco Audience He Will Bankrupt Coal Industry!!<\/a><\/p>\n

OBAMA BRAGS ABOUT BANKRUPTING COAL POWER PLANT COMPANIES<\/a><\/p>\n

…and so on.<\/p>\n

They’re kind of full of it.<\/p>\n

First of all, he’s talking about making it difficult to build new coal plants. not shutting down existing ones. No one gets “bankrupted” in that scenario.<\/p>\n

I’m not sure that’s a wise approach, given new clean-coal technologies, and I don’t see how it fits into a broader energy policy that revolves around replacing oil imports, but I absolutely don’t think it merits the level of hysteria and hyperbole that’s presented.<\/p>\n

Here’s what Obama’s latest policy paper on energy<\/a> (pdf) has to say about coal:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

  • Develop and Deploy Clean Coal Technology<\/b>. Carbon capture and storage technologies hold enormous potential to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions as we power our economy with
    \ndomestically produced and secure energy. As a U.S. Senator, Obama has worked tirelessly to ensure that clean coal technology becomes commercialized. An Obama administration will
    \nprovide incentives to accelerate private sector investment in commercial scale zero-carbon coal facilities. In order to maximize the speed with which we advance this critical technology, Barack
    \nObama and Joe Biden will instruct DOE to enter into public private partnerships to develop 5 “first-of-a-kind” commercial scale coal-fired plants with carbon capture and sequestration.\n<\/li>\n

    <\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    So under cap-and-trade, you can build a “clean coal” plant – one with extremely low carbon outputs – but if you build a “dirty-coal” plant, the cost of the carbon output will be uneconomical.<\/p>\n

    I really don’t see this as exceptional; in the mid-term, natural gas, nuclear, and renewables are far more important.<\/p>\n

    having said that, I think his policy on nukes is hypocritical.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Armed Liberal thinks the blogosphere attacks on Obama’s coal quote are largely dishonest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1950"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1950\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}