Most Deserving Of A Lump Of Coal

Climate czar John Kerry, who must have nightmares of everyone’s carbon footprint but his own, dreams of outlawing coal-fired power plants across the world. Doing so is “how you can do something for health,” he said from the United Nations 28th global warming cocktail party in oil-rich Abu Dhabi. Avoiding blackouts and holding down electricity prices are also good for health, but health is not what the warming activists are interested in.

After declaring that “​​there shouldn’t be any more coal power plants permitted anywhere in the world,” the White House’s climate hector in chief admitted “the reality is that we’re not doing it.”

How dare India, with a growing population of 1.43 billion, displease the imperious Kerry by asking “​​private firms to ramp up investments in new coal-fired power plants to meet a dramatic rise in electricity demand and bridge nearly 30 gigawatts of additional requirement by 2030.” How dare the Chinese unleash “a massive coal power expansion” to meet its needs.

It’s as if they want to get a small taste of the sweet life Kerry has enjoyed for all of his now nearly 80 years on Earth, the advantages that come only when cheap and plentiful electricity is available at the flip of a switch. He won’t stand for it.

Neither will others of his despicable ilk. The administration that Kerry represents has committed the country to halt new coal plant construction while killing off existing plants.

“We will be working to accelerate unabated coal phase-out across the world, building stronger economies and more resilient communities,” Kerry said in a statement crafted with nothing at all in mind but a blind, dead-end agenda. 

“The first step is to stop making the problem worse: stop building new unabated coal power plants.”

And replace them with what? Solar and wind power? As we and others have argued so many times before, the renewables transition is a fantasy, certainly on the timetables policymakers and bureaucrats have forced on the rest of us, and likely well beyond those.

We’re fully aware of the drawbacks of burning coal to produce energy. It’s far from a perfect energy source.

But unlike solar and wind, which for the climatistas are effectively the only acceptable alternatives to coal and natural gas, it is 1) economical, and it 2) produces energy when it’s dark, when it’s cloudy, and when the wind isn’t blowing, both of which are necessary components of prosperity. These are important points either lost on, or ignored by, climate activists, who are willing, and in many cases eager, to curb prosperity and condemn the West to a pre-modern existence.

It’s the sort of tunnel vision that’s taken Kerry down the road to “becoming more militant about coal plants,” and whine that he does not “understand how adults who are in positions of responsibility can be avoiding responsibility for taking away those things that are killing people on a daily basis.”

If he thinks a world of blackouts and scarcity-driven high energy costs are benign and don’t increase mortality – 68,000 Europeans recently lost their lives because they couldn’t afford to adequately heat their homes – then he needs to work harder at being an adult. Just days before his 80th birthday, he’s still acting like a reckless, look-at-me high school bully who had his good life handed to him.

— Written by the I&I Editorial Board