The coal story is so important simply because the U.S. has massively undeveloped coal resources. With 27 percent of the world’s coal reserves estimated at 270 billion tons, the U.S. is the Saudi Arabia of coal. And yet cap-and-trade would destroy this critical sector.
New coal technologies being developed right now wouldn’t even be allowed to flourish under cap-and-trade. Synthetic-fuel-developed coal, through the Fisher-Tropsch technology, is a proven gas-to-liquid process that sequesters coal carbon. It could power the American economy for generations. Rentech Corp. is already using this process to create an ultra-low carbon and sulfur liquid that can be easily adapted to all our transportation needs. According to the ESS Environmental company, other chemical-based technologies that produce virtually no carbon emissions also could be used.
But the great risk is that cap-and-trade will stop these technologies dead in the water, right in their tracks. That would be a tragedy.
Sen. McCain, who favors cap-and-trade, has not yet spoken directly to the coal issue, or for that matter to the various ways that coal and natural gas can be liquefied and turned into clean fuel. But this could be an important political point for McCain.
Economist Jerry Bowyer has circulated a map of U.S. coal deposits that shows a proliferation of coal in key swing states such as Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. Much has been written about Hillary Clinton’s ability to attract white, culturally conservative, working-class voters who have massively rejected Barack Obama. Various polls strongly suggest that McCain can capture as much as 20 or even 25 percent of these votes and thereby defeat Obama in November. But the Appalachian coal people may have a hard time swallowing cap-and-trade, which in effect would cap coal, their jobs, and their livelihoods.
To be sure, Obama also favors cap-and-trade, so McCain could win the vote anyway on the cultural grounds of traditional family values, religious faith, pro-war patriotism, and pro-gun individualism. But unless Sen. McCain can address clean-coal development and somehow carve out allowances for it, he may have a much tougher time moving the carbon working class into his column this November.
For McCain, bad carbon economics could lead to even worse carbon politics.