Defeat of coal bill will be devastating

On June 20, U.S. Sen. James Inhofe’s S.J. Resolution 37 was brought to the floor of the Senate for a vote, only to be summarily voted down the same day by a mostly partisan vote. Inhofe’s resolution would have prevented the EPA from implementing “Utility MACT” which has been described as the most economically devastating regulation in its 42-year history.

Unfortunately, neither the announcement of the proposed U.S. Senate vote nor the results were thought important enough to report by the Daily Herald, even though MACT, with its mandated greenhouse gas standards, will make it virtually impossible to build a new coal-fired power plant in the U.S. and will likewise cause many coal plants now in existence to shut down.

Inhofe’s resolution to defeat MACT — which offered the only chance to stop MACT from going forward — failed 46 to 53, mostly along party lines, although five Democratic senators from coal-rich states joined Senate Republicans. Unfortunately Dick Durbin was not among the five Democratic senators.

Despite the Democratic crossover, five Republican senators must account for not providing the votes to stop Utility MACT from going forward, instead electing to pay homage to the “consensus” theory of man-made global warming which rejects hard scientific facts documenting how CO2 emissions — what we exhale and what plants need to live — are not the root cause of climate change.

It is telling how four of the five Republican Party defectors are from northeastern states with brutal winters. Surely Sen. Durbin must know that Illinois is a coal-rich state and that during the winter season Illinois is also a cold state. Isn’t Durbin concerned about job losses in Illinois’s coal mining communities or the increase in electric costs when coal plants here in Illinois close their doors unable to meet the stringent standards?

Nancy J. Thorner

Lake Bluff