Obama Promised Audience: Will Destroy Coal Industry
Speaking to the San Francisco Chronicle in January this year, Senator Barack Obama said that he would put a new “cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there” if he would become president.
Every single person who would want to “build a coal-powered plant” would be able to do so, Obama said, but his new system would “bankrupt them.”
The remarks could prove highly explosive in key battleground states such as Virginia , Ohio, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and Indiana, all of which are dependent on the coal industry.
“What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there,” Obama was recorded as saying. “I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.”
This would mean, Obama went on to explain, that “if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.”
That in turn would, the junior Senator from Illinois who could become America’s first African American president explained, “generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.”
He repeated: “So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them.”
With just two days to go until the elections, and with several of coal states being key battleground states, where the race remains close, the audio could very well boost Sen. John McCain’s chances of surging in the polls and, eventually, winning these states if voters in these states hear about it. Obama has tried to downplay his anti-coal credentials and plans in recent months, but this audio shows that he is no friend of the coal industry, this while many thousands of voters depend on this industry for their livelihood.
You can listen to Obama say it himself below:
The final paragraph blunts any and all damage to Obama:
The only thing that I have said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as an ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way we should pursue it.
All I heard was Obama saying that “dirty” coal business and startups will be bankrupt. “Clean” coal is the way to go. I didn’t vote for Obama (Bob Barr for me) but as I said earlier, I don’t think this will affect him. The race is 50/50 as far as I’m concerned.
It’s still unprecedented to have such a cavalier attitude about destroying an industry, and the resulting loss of jobs, T-Steel. There’s also this part of the same interview, where Obama matter-of-factly explains how his policies will make energy costs skyrocket.
Of course it’s political malpractice that McCain’s camp didn’t find these tapes and run the ads. It’s more than likely too late to have an impact now.
Obama’s and McCain’s clean coal “love” is the way we should be going as a country. But I will grant you this, it does sound more ham-fisted one my second and third listen. But I have a couple of good friends who have lost family members to black lung disease from working in those mines. And they have said on many occasions (years before Obama’s January 2008 comments) that the coal industry should “go away and we should go nuclear all the way”. Which is more towards McCain’s view (concerning nuclear).
I do agree with you on your political malpractice statement. McCain should have used this statement in the debates. He would have really stung Obama hard.
It’s obviously stupid for him to say he’ll bankrupt an industry because of the enormous opportunity to take it out of context. It’s utterly soundbitable.
But T-Steel is right. If you take it as a whole, you understand where he’s coming from. The coal producers should be moving toward clean coal, and both Obama and McCain have promoted this shift. I still think McCain has a lead in energy, though.
Yeah, he actually did use the nuclear thing against Obama in one of the debates- because basically his position on nuclear is the same as what he revealed about his position on coal here, he’ll make it cost prohibitive to build plants. It’s pretty apparent that he didn’t know about this tape because it would have fit right in and shown that there’s a pattern that will result in an energy policy that will make prices skyrocket…and then presumably, the wealthy will have to help the poor and working poor with their energy bills. He even alludes to that in this exchange, which just shows that he actually knows that corporations don’t actually pay the higher taxes and fees that are imposed on them, the consumers do. So basically he wants to raise the cost of doing business (because apparently he thinks that makes it more ‘fair’) and then when the effects of that hurt the less wealthy citizens, he creates a rationale for a tax code to ’spread the wealth’.
MM- the difference is that McCain doesn’t want that shift to happen in a lurch that throws thousands of people’s jobs away and simultaneously creates a large increase in energy costs (which WOULD happen, because the alternative technologies aren’t ready yet, and even if nuclear plants are built- which won’t happen under Obama- they won’t be ready for quite some time either.