Tag Archives: Kentucky

Markets, Not Mandates
 Are Responsible For
 Kentucky’s Coal Woes

 

Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), the newly installed Senate majority leader, is fond of lambasting the Obama administration for its “war on coal’’ and its impact on his Kentucky constituents. Following the latest U.N. climate change meeting in Peru in December, for example, McConnell criticized the administration for its “entire international crusade against coal jobs” and pledged that he would “continue to take the war on coal right back to the president and his EPA with laws aimed at protecting coal jobs….”

Too bad the senator wasn’t so worried about those same jobs prior to President Obama’s election in 2008.

A review of the commonwealth’s own coal mining statistics1 shows that the industry has been in decline for years—driven by nothing more than market forces that punish high cost producers. The same market forces that Republicans tend to champion, at least in the abstract.

Continue reading Markets, Not Mandates
 Are Responsible For
 Kentucky’s Coal Woes