Longtime readers know I have a background in the Utility industry. I have never heard of Robert Murray before reading the profile in the Opinion Journal, however. I was never in the fuel-buying end of the business. But this man is worth listening to.
WASHINGTON–Every good party has its wet blanket. In the case of the energy industry's merrymaking for a global warming program, the guy in the dripping bedspread is a 67-year-old, straight-talking coal-mine owner by the name of Robert E. Murray.
You won't hear many of Mr. Murray's energy-biz colleagues mention him; they tend to avoid his name, much as nephews avoid talk of their crazy uncles. GE's Jeffrey Immelt, Duke Energy's Jim Rogers, Exelon's John Rowe–these polished titans have been basking in an intense media glow, ever since they claimed to have seen the light on global warming and gotten behind a mandatory government program to cut C02 emissions. They'd rather not have any killjoys blowing the whistle on their real motives–which is to make a pile of cash off the taxpayers and consumers who'll fund it.
And yet here's Mr. Murray, killjoy-in-chief at the global warming love-fest. "Some elitists in our country can't, or won't, tell fact from fiction, can't understand what a draconian climate change program will do [to] the dreams of millions of working Americans and those on fixed incomes," says the chairman and CEO of Murray Energy, one of the largest private coal concerns in the country. He's incensed by his fellow energy CEOs' "shameless" goal of fattening their bottom lines at the "expense of the broader economy." So these past months he's emerged from his quiet Cleveland office and jumped on the national stage, calling out the rest of his industry's CO2 collaborationists. He's testified in front of Congress; become a regular on television and radio programs; sat for profiles by journalists; and written letters to other energy companies exhorting them to think of the broader consequences.
He is very concerned over what he is seeing right now, rightfully so. The economic consequences of all this hysteria will be devastating.
Had Mr. Costa bothered to stay, he'd have heard a useful, and irrefutable, analysis of just what today's legislative proposals for a global warming program would mean to the economy, including the nation's many miners. "Some 52% of this country's electricity is generated from coal," Mr. Murray says. "Global warming legislation would place arbitrary limits on the use of coal, yet there's nothing to replace it at the same cost. There's nuclear, but the environmentalists killed it off and aren't about to let it come back. There's hydro, but we're using that everywhere we can already. There's natural gas, but supply and pipeline capacity is limited, and it's three times the cost of coal. Politically correct–and subsidized 'alternative energy' is very limited in capability and also expensive.
"So what you are really doing with a global warming program is getting rid of low-cost energy," he says. The consequences? Americans have been fretting about losing jobs to places such as China or India, which already offer cheaper energy. "You hike the cost of energy here further, and you create a mass exodus of business out of this country." Especially so, given that neither of those countries is about to hamstring its own economy in order to join a Kyoto-like accord. He points out that since 1990, U.S. greenhouse gas emissions have increased by 18%, while China's have increased by 77%. Mr. Murray also notes that many countries that have joined Kyoto have already failed to meet their targets.
Mr. Murray, like most honest participants in this debate, can reel off the names of the many respected scientists who still doubt that human activity is the cause of rising temperatures. But he tends to treat the scientific debate almost as a sideshow, an excuse for not talking about what comes next. "Even if the politicians believe 100% that man is causing global warming, they still have an obligation to discuss honestly just what damage they want to inflict on American jobs and workers and people on fixed incomes, in the here and now, with their programs."
Just take one small example. There is an enormous amount of noise right now over the idea of banning incandescent light bulbs. The idea is to change to the compact fluorescent. But examine the packaging for the new bulbs and note the country of origin. It will be China. American factories making incandescents will be shuttered and union production jobs will disappear. That is one tiny example, but it will get much, much worse as the US and the West box themselves into exorbitant energy prices while China, India and the rest of the world wallow in cheap energy. Coal miners – union workers all – will be out of work permanently. There is an economic train wreck being foisted on us.
Listen to Robert Murray.
