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President Obama Just Declared War on Coal

It's a good kind of war.
Image: Flickr

Tuesday afternoon, Obama all but declared war on coal. It's about time.

If we wish to avert the more catastrophic planetary scorching our planet faces, we're going to have to cut out coal. We just are. Coal, until very recently, provided the United States with half of its power supply. Yet it is simply too dirty and too packed with carbon to continue burning as fuel. There's just too much of it. As environmentalist Bill McKibben famously noted, if we burn all the coal that's still left in the ground, we can wave goodbye to a stable, human-friendly climate.

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So it's somewhat ironic that President Obama's omnipresent conservative critics have been accusing him for years of waging "a War on Coal." Because his administration reduced the amount of mercury coal plants are allowed to blast into surrounding communities, he's waging a War on Coal. Because he proposed cleaner standards for power stations, he's Killing Coal.

The charge was supposed to resonate with moderate coal-state voters—big, capitalism-hating Obama was rearing his Stalinist head to close up their mines and take away their jobs. In reality, he's done relatively little to penalize the coal industry—in fact, he has offered up some of the largest coal leases for mining the stuff in recent memory.

So there hasn't been any actual war on coal. Until today. Ensuring that people who live within a hundred miles of a coal plant to not get chronic respiratory ailments is not war. That's living in a reasonable democratic society.

But then, at Georgetown University, Obama delivered a widely-anticipated speech on climate change. Along with making some surprising announcements—that he'd only approve the controversial Keystone XL pipeline if it didn't "exacerbate" carbon emissions, for instance—he drew up some predictable, but long-overdue battle lines. He announced that he's asking the EPA to file its rules to rein in coal pollution in power plants no later than next year—and that he wants the laws finalized by 2015. He mocked Republican climate change deniers, and exhorted the need for immediate action in drawing down carbon emissions.

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"In 2009, the EPA determined that [carbon emissions] are a threat to our health and our welfare," Obama said today. "Power plants can still dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air for free. That's not right, it's not safe, and it needs to stop."

The only way to really get it to stop is to wage that war on coal. And it's finally starting. This is a War on Coal: Obama demanding outright, on national television, that the Environmental Protection Agency regulate power plants that emit greenhouse gases. That's a big deal. Them's fighting words—after all, coal plants emit loads of greenhouse gases into their atmosphere. It's kind of their thing. With extisting technology, you can't run a coal plant without CO2 emissions. If you regulate greenhouse gases, coal loses. It's that simple.

"Power plants can still dump unlimited amounts of carbon pollution into the air for free. That's not right, it's not safe, and it needs to stop."—President Obama

TIME's Bryan Walsh says that this is "the most important part" of Obama's climate plan. It's "a Presidential memorandum that will direct [the EPA] to establish carbon pollution standards for new and existing power plants, under the authority of the Clean Air Act."

Obama himself pointed out in his speech that "Today, about 30% of our carbon pollution comes from our power plants." They're the single biggest source of emissions in the US, and much of that comes from decades-old power plants that are especially pollution-rich. The proposed rules could kill them off altogether. There are casualties in war, after all.

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Walsh writes that "If the EPA were to establish strict pollution standards for carbon—none exist right now—utilities might well be forced to close down coal plants in favor of newer natural gas, coal plants with carbon sequestration … nuclear or renewables." The president could then ride off into the sunset a carbon-killing cowboy: "Obama would likely leave the White House with an impressive legacy on climate change."

Earlier this week, one of Obama's science advisors landed himself in hot water for getting a bit too explicit with his anti-coal terminology.

Daniel P. Schrag, a Harvard professor and member of the president's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, told the New York Times that "The one thing the president really needs to do now is to begin the process of shutting down the conventional coal plants. Politically, the White House is hesitant to say they're having a war on coal. On the other hand, a war on coal is exactly what's needed."

He's right, and Obama knows it.

Of course, industry was quick to label Schrag and his boss anti-business, anti-prosperity, and so on and so forth, exactly as they've been doing all along. And indeed, Obama has been tight-lipped on the coal language, acknowledging that moderate voters in coal states might take his regulatory moves as a threat—which is why he didn't explicity attack coal in his big speech today.

”Cleaner natural gas instead of … dirtier fuel sources.” Coal. Say it. Coal!

— David Roberts (@drgrist) June 25, 2013

Instead, he used sly language—he implored us to help developing countries to "avoid repeating the same mistakes we made." As in, let's switch straight to solar and wind and leave coal behind. And one of the biggest initiatives in his new plan that isn't getting attention is a rule that will effectively halt the public funding of international coal plants.

So yes: This really is a war on coal, even if Obama is watching his words—justifiably so, given the politics—but his actions speak louder. Coal stocks plunged when word got out that Obama would aim to regulate dirty power plants. If the adminsitration follows through, that decline will merely be the beginning.