Coal War? Cool it, Cotton

I’m sitting here soaking up air conditioning and wondering about next month’s electricity bill, and pondering that Arkansans simply cannot abide Barack Obama.

Generally speaking, the people of this state believe that Obama is so culturally disconnected from them that he poses a threat to their way of life.

The latest example is maybe the best one.

———◊———

Obama gave a speech Tuesday embracing the scientific validity of climate change. He said he would take unilateral, congressional-avoiding executive actions to respond to it.

He said he would impose, by regulation, tougher carbon-emission standards that would clamp down on the polluting practices of coal fired power plants.

He called for innovation to get more natural gas out of the ground for power generation.

And he called for good ol’ American ingenuity to develop renewable energy sources.

You should know that, at present, about half the electricity generated for consumption in Arkansas comes from burning coal that gets brought in by rail. You should know that tougher emissions standards might well either shut down coal plants or run up their costs or reduce their generating capacity.

You should know that, in the short term at least, a get-tough policy on coal would seem likely to reduce the electricity available in the Arkansas marketplace.

That would seem to force conservation and stimulate development of alternatives, which is the idea.

But it also would seem logical that the move would, at least for a time, run up the costs and impair the reliability of inhabitable indoor living conditions in Arkansas in the summer.

U.S. Rep. Tom Cotton, who never misses a chance to blame Obama for anything, was naturally the first Arkansas politician to land a statement on all this in my email inbox.

He decried the president’s “war on coal,” which, actually, the president did not declare.

A Harvard professor gave an interview saying he wished Obama would declare a “war on coal,” but lamenting that the president was going to stop short of that.

So you see the typical Republican trick of nomenclature and labeling. It’s the president’s “war on coal” because a Harvard professor used the phrase, even in saying the president wouldn’t declare one.

Then Cotton said the president’s actions would force the closure of 13 of the 14 active power plants in the state. He had some basis for that, I’m sure, though I didn’t get any response on my query of his press secretary.

Amid the opportunism, shrillness, alarmism, overstatement and misstatement of Cotton, and amid the special-interest resistance of the coal-heavy Arkansas electrical energy, especially by the state’s politically potent rural electric cooperatives, I wish to offer three potentially calming points and a single disquieting one.

First, a conversion to greater reliance on natural gas through innovative exploration and extraction would be no bad thing economically for a state with a lot of natural gas. (There is a little earthquake issue and we’ll need to watch our groundwater.)

Second, none of this can get done quickly. Obama will be out of office before it could possibly get accomplished.

New EPA regulations must be promulgated in concert with state governments in accordance with procedures entailing public comment periods. Then, after that, the power companies could go to court and get injunctions.

During that time, Republicans in Congress could be making laws forbidding what the president is trying to do unilaterally by executive authority.

Third, a great Arkansas company-the conspicuous exception to the rule I’ve asserted here-likes the president’s plan and extols it. Wal-Mart is fast developing renewable energy and says the president is on the right track.

That is to say Wal-Mart has figured out how to make money through greenness.

Now for the disquieting point: Our state’s aversion to Obama has largely to do with the fact that we want a good lettin’ alone, but that he keeps messing with us, be it on health insurance or air conditioning.

What Arkansas people need to accept-no matter who is president-is that we are not an island disconnected from the rest of the country and world.

And we cannot legitimately choose to be left disconnected.

Environmental problems are like tornadoes.

We can pray that they miss us. We can give odd and misplaced thanks when they hit somebody besides us.

But their tornado is also our tornado, just as ours will also be theirs.

Let’s not get the idea that we have everything under independent control in an environmental Eden.

We routinely abuse our environment for our livelihood in Arkansas. We’re just lucky that there aren’t enough of us yet to make a real mess.

———◊———

John Brummett’s column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Email him at [email protected]. Read his blog at brummett.arkansasonline.com, or his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.