Allen attacks EPA for protecting human and environmental health

First it was minority and elderly voters, then women, and then the environment. Ok, maybe the environment has been on the GOP hit list for some time now. Oh yea, there are also those minorities…

But given the Richmond Times Dispatch’s obvious sympathy with wannabe U.S. Senator George Allen’s attacks aimed at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for releasing new carbon dioxide emissions limits for new coal-fired plants created to protect public health and mitigate further global warming, it stands to reason why anyone would want to retain coal as a source of energy in Virginia given its scientifically documented detrimental health and environment effects.

In the case of George Allen, the answer is clear. Allen is as much a tool of the fossil fuel industry as the shovel is the tool of a digger.

The motives of the Richmond Times are not so clear-cut, if for no other reason than the money that backs the newspaper is not as readily transparent as that which backs George Allen. But if we give writers for the Richmond Times the benefit of a doubt and assume that they are half-way intelligent, then their simplistic logical connections (more carbon regulations will necessarily result in the devastation of particular parts of Virginia’s economy!) seem influenced by something other than a mere lack of intelligence.  

Unfortunately, there will always be winners and losers in any economy. But as long as coal-fired power plants are still spewing untold amounts of carbon dioxide out of their smokestacks, everyone loses out, rich and poor, Southside and Northern Virginian alike. There are no ultimate winners when coal is being burned for energy.

Virginia, like the rest of the country, will have to learn to live without coal. A world in which the human race survives will have to use smarter and healthier technologies than coal to power our daily lives. The Richmond Times and George Allen didn’t get the memo.