Blatant Disregard Gets the Gavel

The U.S. will now be held hostage to a few states -- Kentucky and Oklahoma -- that make big money off the burning of fossil fuels. They don't care one bit about climate change's impact on people and the economy because there's money to be made.

Can they really have such a blatant disregard for the health of the planet and the people that live on it? The answer is definitely, positively, yes.

"Senator Mitch McConnell (Kentucky) has said he will fight regulations that would limit carbon emissions,"  according to the New York Times.

"Senator James M. Inhofe of Oklahoma, a prominent skeptic of climate change and the presumed new chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, is expected to open investigations into the E.P.A., call for cuts in its funding and delay the regulations as long as possible," said the Times article.

I'm still wondering what's wrong with a so-called "war on coal", which McConnell whined about during his campaign. What if it was asbestos or arsenic? We learned that these things poison people so we eliminated them.

We know that burning coal is bad -- think strip mining, black lung, climate change, mercury in our fish and fetuses, soot -- but it's still around. It's still the primary fuel we use in the U.S. to generate electricity. It doesn't make any sense.

It only makes sense when common sense is thrown out, and there's one thing that can do that -- money. It's a shame that greed is ultimately going to bring us down. I really thought, hoped, we were better than that.