EPA's Greenhouse Gas Declaration Gets Cold Reception in KY

As the nations of the world join together in the Copenhagen Conference, the United States EPA is getting their act together too. Today the EPA released a declaration that carbon monoxide and other greenhouse gases endanger the public's health. While this statement is greatly helpful to the environment (even though it seemed like already well-known knowledge to me...) it could have some devastating affects for our state's coal industry. More than 90% of Kentucky's energy is coal-fired, so with the more stringent restrictions that this announcement sets the stage for, our industries could be seriously damaged. But, as the environmentalists in our state point out, our state has been relying on cheap energy for too long and it is time we learned to deal with the consequences. Our state's politicians refuse to respond currently and it is thought that this issue will not be addressed by them until 2010.

Since we have been learning about the atmosphere and emissions recently in class, this article has great pertinence. And, in Go Green Club, we recently watched a movie concerning coal, making this article even more interesting to me. The movie, Coal Country, while generally unbiased gave a slightly more negative view of coal than this article did. But, since I'm used to getting only the view that coal is bad and environmentally harmful, this view from the other side was sort of a nice. Although I still think that coal is not an effective energy choice, I now better understand why our state relies so heavily upon it and why it would be degrading if we completely deleted coal usage from our lives. But I am elated about the EPA's announcement. Although most people already knew about the harmful effects of carbon monoxide and other greenhouse gases, this will help create even more public awareness and hopefully make our country a more environmentally conscious place. This article will cause great polarization in Kentucky though; even just reading this short article I could see that. The politicians are seemingly on the side of coal, the environmentalists are firmly against coal, and the rest of the public is somewhere in between. This issue will become increasingly important for our state now, and it's important that we make sure we stay well informed concerning the issue.


From the Lexington Herald Leader, written by Halimah Abdullah and Dori Hjalmarson, published Monday, December 7 2009
http://bluegrasspolitics.bloginky.com/2009/12/07/epas-greenhouse-gas-declaration-gets-cold-reception-in-ky/