The New York Coal Trade Association, headquartered in New York
City, recently held its 94th annual banquet and meeting at the
New York Hilton. One of the guest speakers was Bob Murray,
founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corporation and probably one of
the few CEOs brave enough to challenge the militant climate
control movement that threatens the future of America's economy.
In his speech, he dared to say that he regards Al Gore as the
shaman of global doom and gloom. He is not joking when he says,
"He is more dangerous than his global warming."
Unlike many heads of corporations who are taking their companies
on that long green mile and caving in to the demands of
environmental militants, Mr. Murray is fighting tooth and nail
for what he says is, "the little guy that nobody cares
about."
"Some wealthy elitists in our country," he told the
audience, "who cannot tell fact from fiction, can afford an
Olympian detachment from the impacts of draconian climate change
policy. For them, the jobs and dreams destroyed as a result will
be nothing more than statistics and the cares of other people.
These consequences are abstractions to them, but they are not to
me, as I can name many of the thousands of the American citizens
whose lives will be destroyed by these elitists' ill-conceived
‘global goofiness' campaigns."
Mr. Murray was a coal miner in Ohio who survived two mining
accidents and built funds from a mortgaged house into a private
coal mining company with more than 3,000 employees. He expresses
concern about the proposals in Congress that will ration the use
of coal, warning of much worse adverse consequences to Americans
than those experienced after the 1990 amendment of the Clean Air
Act.
Mr. Murray told me that he had seen the effect of the drastic
reductions in coal production, and the wrenching impact on
hundreds of communities, as a result of that legislation. In Ohio
alone, from 1990 to 2005, about 118 mines were shut down, costing
more than 36,000 primary and secondary jobs. These impacted areas
have spent years recovering, and some never will. He spoke of the
families that broke up, many lost homes, and some were
impoverished, because of legislation that the environmentalists
call a "success."
"I don't need a computer graphic like in Gore's movie, to
learn about this havoc," he told me, "I lived it and
saw it firsthand."
To Mr. Murray, so-called "global warming" is a human
issue, not just an environmental one. In his speech, Murray said,
"The unfolding debate over atmospheric warming in the
Congress, the news media, and by the pundits has been skewed and
totally one-sided, in that they have been preoccupied,
speculative environmental disasters of climate change."
Mr. Murray told me that the Democrats had tried to stop his
scheduled testimony on March 20 before the House Energy and
Mineral Resources Subcommittee, titled "Toward a Clean
Energy Future: Energy Policy and Climate Change on Public
Lands." But after Mr. Murray was interviewed by Bloomberg
News and by the Wall Street Journal, they relented. The chairman
refused to hear his testimony and left Rep. Patrick Kennedy, a
Democrat of Rhode Island, in charge.
In his testimony, Mr. Murray explained: "America is
dependent on our coal because it is abundant, with some of our
best deposits located on public lands; it is affordable; and it
is critical to our energy security to protect all Americans from
the hostile and unstable governments from which much of our
country's energy is currently imported."
Right now about 52% of the country's electricity is generated by
coal. In the coastal cities we tend to forget about that because
we get most of our electricity from oil, natural gas, and nuclear
power plants. But the farms that grow our food and many other
industries around the country can't afford these more expensive
sources of energy. Manufacturers will outsource jobs to foreign
countries that will not subscribe to emission caps and controls.
China is building 50 new coal-fired power plants, and Beijing has
stated it will not agree to mandatory emission constraints in the
post-2012 Kyoto treaty. Why are we being so stupid about this
issue?
The irony is that these caps and controls will do little to
affect climate. Timothy Ball, a renowned environmental
consultant, testified before the committee that global warming is
more likely to be caused by sun spots rather than human activity.
Mr. Murray's passion for saving the "little guy" is
truly admirable. Too bad that fervor is completely absent in
Congress.