Peachy. Congress is ever so serious about doing something about pollution, global warming, or related matters. Unless it conflicts with corporate welfare.
Wheeeee! More pollution for everybody!
Federal Loans for Coal Plants Clash With Carbon Cuts - washingtonpost.com :
A Depression-era program to bring electricity to rural areas is using taxpayer money to provide billions of dollars in low-interest loans to build coal plants even as Congress seeks ways to limit greenhouse gas emissions.That government support is a major force behind the rush to coal plants, which spew carbon dioxide that scientists blame for global warming.
The beneficiaries of the government's largesse -- the nation's rural electric cooperatives -- plan to spend $35 billion to build conventional coal plants over the next 10 years, enough to offset all state and federal efforts to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions over that time.
The Office of Management and Budget wants to end loans for new power plants and limit loans for transmission projects in the most remote rural areas. But the powerful National Rural Electric Cooperative Association deployed 3,000 members on Capitol Hill last week to push Congress to keep the program intact, arguing that the loans for new coal plants are needed to keep electricity cheap and reliable in rural areas.
Environmentalists have also targeted the program. They say it removes any pressure for the rural co-ops to promote energy efficiency or aggressively tap renewable resources. Rural co-ops rely on coal for 80 percent of their electricity, compared with 50 percent for the rest of the country, and electricity demand at rural co-ops is growing at twice the national rate.
Ronald D. Utt, co-author of the report and a former official at the OMB, calls the program a “remnant of the New Deal.” “Poverty is no longer a characteristic of the agricultural community as it was during the Depression . . . and as areas have grown, the basic clientele are well-to-do people who have nothing to do with agriculture,” Utt said. Many of the areas served by co-ops are densely populated and do not need help, critics say.James J. Jura, chief executive of Associated Electric Cooperative, a co-op that has both government and commercial loans, said much of his region's growth comes from retirement and recreational developments near lakes around Branson in southwest Missouri. The town's Web site boasts of a 17-story luxury condominium complex, a new shopping mall, 17,000 hotel rooms and dozens of theaters. “No, this isn't Manhattan or Las Vegas; it's Branson, Missouri,” the site says.
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