Political Quotes

“Mr. Chairman, I represent southern Illinois which is part of the Illinois coal basin, and it is part of the coal that we have in this country, 300 years of coal supply in this country to supply energy needs for America. The problem is much of it is high sulfur coal; we cannot sell it. The Clean Air Act cost us nearly 15,000 jobs in the Illinois coal basin alone when it was passed, and I guess the question that I would ask of our colleagues is where do we think that we are going to go in the future for supplying the energy needs of this country? We have barely 30 years of proven oil and gas reserves left in the entire world right now, we are decommissioning our nuclear power plants all over this country, and that is going to rapidly expand as their life runs out. We are kidding ourselves if we think we are going to go to solar or wind or some of the other things. Mr. Chairman, coal is the single greatest energy supply we have, and we simply have to find a way to clean it with either pre- or post- combustion technology so that we can use it to supply the energy needs of this country, and that is what the clean coal technology program has done for us. Already more than $9 billion in sales of advanced U.S. technology in the United States and overseas can be traced back to the achievements of the clean coal technology program.”