America’s Power Tour recently took us to Peabody Energy in St. Louis, where we caught up with Morry Davis, the Director of Government Relations for Peabody Energy. Davis spoke with us about the impacts proposed EPA regulations would have on Missourians, and described the balance between the recovering economy and the environment.
With more than 80 percent of its electricity coming from coal, Missouri would be heavily impacted by proposed EPA regulations. If these regulations are enacted, Missouri could lose 76,000 jobs, and electricity rates could increase by 23.1 percent, according to a study from the National Economic Research Associates.
“Primarily people want to see job creation…they’re also concerned about the environment, but everything has to be in balance,” says Davis.
The EPA has not assessed the impact that all of these regulations would have on small businesses and families across the country. And those are exactly who will be impacted the most in Missouri – the families and small businesses.
“Economic recovery is a primary issue, but that shouldn’t come at the expense of environmental progress. There’s ways to do both, you just have to have well crafted policies,” says Davis. “[People are] asking elected officials as well as EPA and the current administration to take that into account when trying to put these rules into place.”
If you’re concerned about regulations’ effect on Missouri, join Energy for Missouri Jobs.
The American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity (ACCCE) is committed to the idea that America can have the affordable, reliable electricity we need, with the clean environment we want. ACCCE’s Behind the Plug blog is the place for up-to-date news and analysis on clean coal technology developments and energy policy progress.
Your argument – centered on the financial impact upon the American family of maintaining a world their children can survive – would carry a lot more weight if you ever spoke up about the rampant levying of private taxes carried out by your brethren in the hydrocarbons industry. The wildly varying prices of gasoline, diesel fuel, kerosene, jet fuel, heating oil, and natural gas that result from monopolization and speculation have a far more severe impact that $270 a year.
If you want to win friends, then support weaning America from hydrocarbons. You’re in a unique position to benefit: The replacement is certain to be electricity, and the argument that removing all of those internal combustion engines will more than offset any additional requirement for coal-burning power plants is valid.
The public relations benefit would be tremendous; for the first time in decades, an industry that accrues wealth from the harvesting, distribution, and burning of carbonaceous forms of energy would be helping the American people, the United States of America, and the planet we (and more to the point, our children) must live on instead of betraying us all.
Your industry would incur the wrath of the hydrocarbons industry, of course; to paraphrase George Orwell: “In a time of universal greed, doing the right thing is a revolutionary act.”