Don’t Sell Cheap U.S. Coal to Asia

[jsr]

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/02/13/opinion/dont-sell-cheap-us-coal-to-asia.html

Don’t Sell Cheap U.S. Coal to Asia
Michael Riordan

EASTSOUND, Wash. — FROM where I live on Orcas Island in Puget Sound, north of Seattle, I can see Cherry Point across the wind-whipped waters of the Salish Sea. This sandy promontory jutting into Georgia Strait has become the focus of heated debate here in the Pacific Northwest.

Peabody Energy, Carrix and other corporations hope to build a shipping terminal at Cherry Point to export nearly 50 million metric tons of coal to Asia annually. They ballyhoo the jobs the terminal may bring to our region but say nothing about the profits they will reap from selling subsidized coal.

Opponents decry the prospect of the dirty, smelly, noisy trains blocking railroad crossings all across Washington State as they transport coal here from the Powder River Basin in Montana and Wyoming. They also warn that coal dust from the terminal will pollute nearby waters and harm our dwindling populations of herring, threatened Chinook salmon and endangered killer whales.

But much larger issues of national and global concern are at stake. The low-sulfur Western coal, strip-mined from federal lands, is valuable public property. The federal government’s leasing of these lands at low cost to strip miners made some sense a few decades ago when the United States needed low-sulfur coal to reduce the amount of sulfur dioxide that was being emitted by coal-burning power plants and causing acid rain. But today, as utilities convert to cheap natural gas and American coal use declines, mining companies are seeking customers in China, Japan and Korea.

[Montana redneck]

1. Montana school trust lands

A lot of that coal comes from school trust lands and Indian reservation's in Montana and Wyoming. It provides some of the best jobs in the area and employs native American's. It also pays for a lot of the cost of education in these states. Just remember a lot of this coal money goes to helping Native Americans and children (also high priced liberal collage professors')