ArchPundit

You know, if drilling is good, drilling and mining is better. … It’s drilling and mining and using great resources like Illinois coal. You all follow the congressional baseball game. I wore this uniform proudly. It says, ‘The Miners.’ The mining industry and coal is part of the solution.

Drilling is not so good though. The reality is the US doesn’t have the reserves that nitwits like Shimkus try and claim we have.

The problem of claiming coal is the solution is that for it to be the solution, one would have to believe that electric cars are the future and the Republicans are insisting that we just need to drill more and fighting renewable incentives. Illinois relies on two basic forms of electrical power generation: coal and nuclear.  Coal has problems with global warming, air quality, and water quality.  Perhaps we can solve some of those problems with research. Nuclear has no where to put the waste as the day that Yucca opens, it’s full and we don’t have another spot.  This raises the question for Shimkus, of how this solves any problems whatsoever given the current Illinois economy is based on coal and nuclear and the only way to move more energy usage towards coal in terms of legislation is to promote alternative fuel and electric cars which the Republican minority is specifically rejecting.

The discourse keeps getting dumber.  If only people could do math.

Now, there are many problems with coal environmentally and it will be in the mix, but it’s not renewable and it’s not clean meaning it’s not sustainable in the long run.   If one wanted to put the money towards the best usage for a research dollar renewables make far more sense.