West Virginia’s Comeback Begins Now
Unprecedented victory over EPA offers ray of hope
Patrick Morrisey
Historic and unprecedented.
West Virginia’s comeback starts now. I stand
committed to seeing it endure.
Those words illustrate West Virginia’s seismic
The revitalization begins at the D.C. Circuit Court,
win at the U.S. Supreme Court – a victory that
where
my office and its bipartisan coalition of 29
reverberated across the nation instilling hope in the
states and state agencies will demonstrate the far
state’s coal industry and forcing bureaucrats to think
twice before using executive regulation to bring about reaching impact of the EPA’s Power Plan.
radical change.
Let’s be clear, the Power Plan represents a radical
transformation
of the nation’s energy policy and will
The ruling, issued Feb. 9, immediately
have a sweeping impact on the American way of
stopped President Obama from implementing
life. It will decimate West Virginia’s coal industry,
the centerpiece of his coal-killing agenda. It
lead to skyrocketing electric bills and jeopardize the
limits further economic damage by freezing the
Environmental Protection Agency’s progress while reliability of the nation’s energy grid.
our legal challenge proceeds.
For now, the Power Plan seeks to double regulate
coal-fi
red power plants and force states to shift their
This victory does not represent the end our fight,
energy portfolios away from coal-fired generation.
but a crucial time-out. It saves taxpayer dollars
But no energy source is safe.
and may limit some additional layoffs as state
governments and job creators feel more emboldened
President Obama ultimately seeks to transform
to delay any effort at complying with a rule that we
the
EPA from serving as an environmental regulator
believe will be struck down as illegal.
into a central energy planning authority. That would
enable EPA to pick winners and losers, eventually
This represents an enormous triumph for West
moving its line of attack from coal to natural gas or
Virginia. It resets the narrative, stops some of the
other fuels in favor of wind and solar.
bleeding and announces to the world that coal still
does have a future.
8 West Virginia Farm Bureau News