Regarding Barack Obama’s speech yesterday on so-called “climate change,” the Washington Post asks, “Is Obama waging a ‘war on coal’?”—and answers, “To a large extent, the answer is yes,” in that he is seeking to expand costly regulations of coal-fired plants.
But it’s worse than that.
Among other things, Obama also wants to expand the use of government lands to produce uneconomic “renewable” energy, and he wants to force auto manufacturers to produce vehicles that use less fuel—never mind the trade-offs in safety and performance.
What Obama is waging is not merely a war on coal, which would be horrific enough, but a war on energy producers and consumers.
To the degree that the economy continues to function at all amidst this sustained assault, it will be only because energy producers have already made enormous strides in horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing (fracking), technologies that enable them to extract massive quantities of otherwise untappable oil and gas.
Obama, of course, has taken credit for the energy produced by these means, despite the fact that the government has relentlessly throttled the energy industry with regulations and taxes, and despite the fact that Obama’s environmentalist supporters have consistently demonized everyone involved in producing and delivering the life-serving goods. . . .