Aided by Democratic Senators Republicans Want to Pay Utilities to Burn Coal

Our New Feature:  INSANE BUT TRUE

The entire world except for the anti-improve-the-environment morons that make up most of the Republican Party recognize that using coal to generate electricity is a bad thing.  Horrific pollution occurs when the stuff is mined and greenhouse gases are emitted when the stuff is transported and all sorts of bad gases are exhausted when it is burned to create electricity and finally it is a dangerout residue when coal ash is stored.  The only people to support increasing its usage are craven politicians trying to suck up to coal country votes.

Now a report in the WSJ says that, and this is almost impossible to believe, that Democratic Senators from North Dakota and Rhode Island are sponsoring legislation to pay companies to use coal.

What Some Democratic Senators Want to Bring to Your Neighborhood

Buoyed by Mr. Trump’s enthusiasm for the U.S. coal industry, several congressional proposals seek to boost tax breaks for facilities that can capture carbon dioxide, a dangerous greenhouse gas that is a byproduct of fossil-fuel combustion, and offer it to the oil industry for injection underground to stimulate production. The biggest winner—at least initially—could be Southern Co.’s Kemper County, Miss., power plant, a facility designed to capture about 65% of its carbon-dioxide emissions and sell it to oil companies, which use it to help extract crude from wells.


Wow, 65% or as realists put it, letting 35% of carbon emission into the air.  How much could the Kemper plant get?

Atlanta-based Southern owns Mississippi Power Co., which is building the clean-coal project, and stands to reap a windfall of between $695 million and $4.5 billion if any number of legislative measures get passed, according to a calculation by Friends of the Earth.
Wow, they are going to have take away health care from a lot of poor people to pay for that.  And look who is in the big gas hog SUV with the polluter lobby.



The bill supported by Sens. Heitkamp and Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island, would triple the current tax credit of $10 a ton of carbon emissions captured and used in enhanced oil recovery to $35 a ton for the first 12 years a plant operates. 

Now the last we look Rhode Island did not have a single coal mine, so exactly why its Senator is on board here is a mystery.  But if one looks hard one can probably find a reason, and it's better than even money that money is involved.  Or maybe the Senator just feels that a legacy of pollution and global warming is what he is all about.