Most nations value getting richer over getting greener

Stephen Moore writes at Investors Business Daily,

At the very moment President Obama has decided to shutter America's coal industry in favor of much more expensive and less efficient "renewable energy," coal use is surging across the globe.

• Some 1,200 coal plants are planned across 59 countries, with about three-quarters in China and India, according to the World Resources Institute.

• Coal use around the world has grown about four times faster than renewables, according to the global energy monitoring publication BP Review of World Energy 2015.

• German coal "will remain a major, and probably the largest, fuel source for power generation for another decade and perhaps longer," the Financial Times concludes.

• "The U.S. is dropping coal plants at an unprecedented rate, but still nowhere near as quickly as India is adding them," Bloomberg Business reckons.

It's a tremendously expensive gesture that will cost America hundreds of thousands of jobs, raise utility prices by as much as $1,000 per family and reduce GDP by as much half a percentage point a year when we are already barely growing. The poor will be hurt most.

What makes the Obama administration regulations doubly destructive is that the U.S. has more coal than any other nation.

With at least 300 years of supply at a value of trillions of dollars, we are truly the Saudi Arabia of coal. To leave it in the ground would be like Obama telling Nebraska to stop growing corn, Idaho to stop growing potatoes and Silicon Valley to give up on the digital age.

Ironically, the president justifies his war on coal by arguing, "We must lead so that others will follow." But outside of dreamland, the rest of the world has no intention of following Mr. Obama's act of economic masochism. Most nations value getting richer over getting greener — as well they should. Given the sad state of our economy today, so should we.

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