Political Quotes

“I want to point out that the speakers in favor of this bill describe themselves as part of the coal-producing regions of the country. They are representing, they think, the coal-producing regions of the country because they fear, if the coal industry had to use some technology that would reduce carbon emissions, that would cost jobs. I want to dispute that in two respects. One, they claim that no one is using this technology, and that is not accurate. In fact, the control technology is already in effect, being used commercially in the United States for decades. There are seven large commercial CCS--that is carbon capture and sequestration--projects operating today. Dr. Julio Friedmann, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Clean Coal at the U.S. Department of Energy, recently testified: ``First generation CCS technology is commercially available today.'' So why are they worried about jobs? They are being told by the coal miners that, if they have to use a technology that costs money, that would raise the price of coal and, therefore, coal will lose out to other technologies. Well, that hasn't been the case. I have been in Congress for 40 years. I remember the coal industry coming in and saying: If we have to put scrubbers on, we will go broke; they will never burn coal again. The coal industry uses scrubbers right now. The cost of scrubbers has gone down. They overstated how much it would cost.…”