Wyoming Gov.: Don't Examine Global Effects of Coal.
Source: nyt/ap
Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead is asking the White House to disregard pressure from the governors of Washington and Oregon and refuse to evaluate the effects of greenhouse gases that would be emitted by exporting U.S. coal to Asia from ports in the Northwest.
Mead announced Friday he has written to the White House's Council on Environmental Quality stating it would be inappropriate to analyze under the National Environmental Policy Act the effects of burning U.S. coal overseas.
The NEPA law requires detailed analysis of the environmental effects of federal agency actions. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is reviewing three proposed port projects that would accommodate coal exports, one in Oregon and two in Washington.
Wyoming is the nation's leading coal-producing state, and state officials are concerned about falling domestic demand for coal as a result of global warming concerns. State officials are pushing to secure ports in the Northwest to allow coal exports to Asia.
Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2013/04/26/us/ap-us-wyoming-coal.html?hp
mbperrin
(7,672 posts)What could go wrong?
When will people learn that you cannot eat nor breathe nor drink money?
sakabatou
(42,134 posts)frogmarch
(12,153 posts)nothing to see here.
Phillip McCleod
(1,837 posts)..sound when you try to talk to them about their state politics. it's run by republicans, but my sister and her friends all defend them saying they're 'better' and more 'moderate' and 'reasonable' than other states' republicans.
it doesn't help to point out that the devil himself.. dick cheney.. hails from those hinterlands.
elleng
(130,711 posts)but what they say makes some sense to me, and also that public servants do have to think of the effect on their states of governmental actions.
Phillip McCleod
(1,837 posts).. it's a siege mentality is all. i've live in solid red country and know the weight of that cognitive dissonance. it's just too bad that when 'compromise' is not a bad word, 'liberal' is.
elleng
(130,711 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)jonthebru
(1,034 posts)What the Wyoming Governor doesn't want people to know are the facts.
At one point in time the Earth's atmosphere was toxic to most living things.
It took hundreds of millions of years for the plants to filter the toxic carbon dioxide and monoxide out of the atmosphere allowing plants and animals to flourish. Hundreds of millions of years. This process sequestered the harmful elements into deposits within the earth. Once the atmosphere was breathable a process began that has culminated in this planet and its magnificent variety of life in all its aspects, another very long period of time from our prespective.
The Big Blue Ball!
What is happening now is we are taking the sequestered carbon out of the earth and spewing it back into the atmosphere. What took hundreds of millions of years will be undone, destroyed, in a relatively short period of time from whenever coal was massively mined for the "industrial revolution" to the end of our use of carbon fuels in the future. And maybe the end of our existence as well.
We have a very narrow window of opportunity to alleviate this and at the risk of sounding defeatist, without the American People waking up to their responsibility in the Stewardship of this planet, we will probably fail.