Did the President have his fingers crossed [View all]

[pscot]

when he promised clean power?

the greenhouse gas reductions that will result from President Obama's Clean Power Plan, will be wiped out if his administration allows planned new coal leases to go ahead in the Powder River Basin mining region of Montana.

Right now, the Obama administration's Bureau of Land Management is planning to give out 16 new leases to coal companies to extract a whopping 10.2 billion more tons of coal from the Powder River Basin. If these leases go ahead and all of that coal is mined and burned, it would result in 16.2 billion more tons of heat-trapping carbon dioxide being pumped into our atmosphere.

That is an absolutely astonishing amount of pollution. To put it into perspective, the total carbon emissions globally from fossil fuels in 2013 was 9.9 billion.

But here's the thing: if the coal is mined in the United States, but not burned in the United States, and is instead shipped overseas, the Obama administration does not have to take any responsibility for the resulting greenhouse gas emissions.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kevin-grandia/upcoming-decision-by-obama_b_7455736.html?utm_hp_ref=gre