If you were a campaign strategist for the Democrats in the last election, you probably crunched the numbers and decided votes from coal miners weren’t needed anyway. But coal miners and their families aren’t the only voters affected by an anti-coal agenda. Energy prices drive economics; from the production and transport of raw materials, to the manufacture of finished products, to the distribution of goods to customers, to the disposal of old products, the cost of energy is added at every step. When this added cost becomes too great, something in the chain breaks and everything unravels. And when coal is no longer an option as a fuel source for U.S. energy producers, the cost of energy will skyrocket.
Even if I were not employed in the coal industry I would be mad as hell at the policy makers who believe that affordable electricity is wrong; the policy makers who believe that artificially inflating, through regulation, the cost of such a basic necessity is their right; the policy makers who believe that our standard of living is too high and needs to be brought down; the policy makers with very comfortable incomes, able to pay for energy cost increases while millions of Americans lose their jobs.