Sen. John Kerry (D-Green Mafia) Coal, Taxpayer welfare or a green rub-out

John Kerry to coal: Surrender or face destruction

By Steve Milloy
Friday, August 7, 2009

Sen. John Kerry (D-Green Mafia) has made an offer that, he says, the coal industry should not refuse.

As reported by Carbon Control News, Kerry said at a hearing earlier this week:

“All these companies that are sort of stating exaggerated opposition to [cap-and-trade] based on very unrealistic modelling need to stop and consider what their models are going to look like when this is regulated by the EPA without any allowances and without any auction, because then they’re in for a very different economic world… [EPA regulation of CO2 is] going to happen if we don’t do something up here, and I hope people hear that message loudly and clearly. They are smarter and better to come to this table and work with us as they did with the House to find a solution here. It may not be ideal, but the alternative I would think for most of those companies is going to be they will be regulated… “If you care about coal in America—and there are plenty of senators up here and plenty of states that do, and reasons to do so—then the only solution is not to sit there and wait to be regulated… [The only way coal can continue to be used is if it can be made to burn cleanly]… And the only way to burn it clean is to have clean coal technology. And the only way to do that is through this kind of a mechanism where you have $10 billion dollars over 10 years going into that clean coal technology. If it’s regulated by EPA, there’s no money going into clean coal technology.â€