The Grand Prize in Obama's War on Coal™

Guest Post by Willis Eschenbach

It’s a bad week for poor people around the planet. First, and with great fanfare, our President unleashed his patented climate plan, affectionately known as Obama’s War on Coal™. He hasn’t said yet how much Obama’s War on Coal™ will cost, but we can be sure that it will not be cheap. And as in any war, it is guaranteed that the poor will suffer the most.

Sadly, this was followed by even worse news. The World Bank has decided it wants to keep the developing world from having inexpensive electricity. They will not make any more loans for coal-fired power plants.

You remember “inexpensive electricity”? When I was a kid, the US Government used to be in favor of inexpensive electricity, because it was rightly seen as the savior of the poor farmer and the poor housewife. That’s why the Tennessee Valley Authority came to be. I wash the clothes around our house, and I don’t do it by hand. I have inexpensive energy to do that. Now, however, the government and the environmental NGOs and the climate alarmists are doing every single thing that they can to make energy more expensive. And the World Bank has just officially joined the baying chorus.

The World Bank thinks that inexpensive energy will harm the poor … not now, of course, but in fifty years. And on that basis, the World Bank thinks it is justified to harm the poor now.

This is the madness at the base of the climate alarmists policy—it actively harms the poor now, with the justification that it might help their grandkids avoid harm in 50 years.

The wealthy fat-cats running the World Bank are unwilling for school kids in India to have cheap electricity to study by, on the grounds that it might, not will but might, make those students’ grandkids a bit warmer in a century. I doubt that the poor in India would vote for that plan, but I guess the World Bank is our economic paterfamilias who knows what the poor need, much better than the poor know themselves, and it’s not cheap electricity …

The same thing is going on in the US. Where I live, California, the resident burglars are called the Pacific Gas and Electric Company, known as PGE. They are a monopoly utility, and supposedly they are run for the benefit of the ratepayers.

Now, if you had a monopoly public utility for say water, and your water supplier said they were going to charge twenty times the going price for a glass of water if you were really, really thirsty, would you think that was in the public interest?

That’s exactly what’s happening to Anthony, PGE is gouging him on the price because that’s when he really needs the electricity … what kind of a screwed up world has this become? A public utility is supposed to provide cheap energy, not gouge the customers at the time they really need the electricity.

Now, the East Coast and the Powder River country is going to feel the pain, as coal-fired plants close and their electricity costs start to creep up. So, since war has been declared, let’s see if Obama’s War on Coal™ is worth the billions and billions of dollars it will cost … what are we buying for our money?

Well, fortunately I don’t have to go through all the math to figure it out. There is a strong supporter of the Obama climate plan named Chris Hope, who has done the math for us. His blog says:

Chris is a climate change policy researcher, PAGE model developer, and faculty member at Cambridge Judge Business School, interested in environment and energy.

He has used his whiz-bang model to do the calculations. His assumption is that the US will do the following

1) Lower the CO2 emissions to 83% of the 2008 level over the next seven years, and

2) Maintain that low level of emissions for the succeeding 80 years.

Now, absent a huge technological breakthrough or another depression, there’s little chance of us getting to 83% of 2008 emissions in the next seven years.

But that pales before the improbable idea of the US maintaining that low a level of emissions for the next 80 years.

So to start with, we see that Mr. Hope has made the most hopeful assumptions about the climate plan—first that it will meet its initial goal, and second that it will maintain that goal for over three-quarters of a century.

And with those likely unattainable assumptions, what does Mr. Hope calculate as the effect of Obama’s War on Coal™?

Well … um … well, he says that by the year 2100, nearly a century from now, that the temperatures will be much cooler.

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How much cooler, you ask?

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Well … two …

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Two degrees C?

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Er … no …

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Oh … so, it’s two tenths of a degree C, then, not two degrees C?

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Um … no.

…

I have to confess, in writing this I find that I am very reluctant to reveal the expected outcome of Obama’s War on Coal™ for a simple reason—it is at times like this that I’m embarrassed to be an American.

…

Because the reality is that Chris Hope, an ardent supporter of the War on Coal™, using the most optimistic (and unattainable) assumptions, says that IF we win the War on Coal and we put hundreds of people out of work and increase the cost of electricity for poor and wealthy alike (although obviously, Obama and his rich pals don’t care about the cost increase), here’s our prize. Here’s what Chris Hope says we’ve bought for the all the pain and suffering:

In the year 2100 the world might be 0.02°C cooler.

Two hundredths of a degree in a century. Maybe. That’s the prize. That’s what Chris Hope has proudly announced will be the reward for the job loss and the pain and suffering of the poor.

Two hundredths of a degree of cooling. An amount that is far below our ability to even measure …

Me, I think that that one fact alone should be our emblem and our rallying cry in opposition to this gob-smacking lunacy. So the next time someone says they think the War on Coal™ is a brilliant plan, gently point out to them that they are advocating spending billions and billions of dollars to cool the planet by two hundredths of a degree in the year 2100, and in the process harming the poor … and ask if that strikes them as the most rational of plans …

Or you could just shake them until their teeth rattle and say “You think we should spend billions of dollars to cool the planet two hundredths of a degree a century from now, while hurting the poor today? Have you gone barking mad? Billions for a reward that’s too small to be even measured, while pensioners shiver in fuel poverty? Unhand my wallet, you thieving varlet, and slink back to your hole!”

I swear, this unremitting attempt by Obama and the activists and the environmental NGOs to crush the poor back into their hovels, while they proudly declaim the noblest of motives, turns my stomach and threatens to fair unhinge my reason … how can they do that?

Billions and billions of dollars for two hundredths of a degree … bad news, folks, the Emperor not only has no clothes. He’s lost his mind entirely.

Grrrrr, bad for my blood pressure … in any case, here’s what coal did while Obama was declaring war on it …

w.