Investor's Business Daily devoted a recent editorial to "Obama's War on Coal."
"The Environmental Protection Agency has revoked the coal mining permit for Arch Coal's Spruce Mine No. 1 in West Virginia's Logan County," the editors note. "The permit was issued four years ago and since then Arch Coal, which provides 16 percent of America's coal supply, has followed every jot and tittle of the rules it was to operate under."
Coal is not the only enemy that the President and his "green" friends have in their sights, however. They're targeting all fossil fuels that have a realistic prospect of economical development.
"We have an oil drilling moratorium in parts of the Gulf of Mexico and off both coasts," the financial paper's editors emphasized, "... energy-rich areas in and off Alaska are off-limits, as are vast areas in the West. Nuclear power is stalled and even natural gas is under attack for its use of so-called 'fracking' technology."
When it comes to tapping coal, oil and gas reserves, it's easy to get caught between a rock and a hard place – because that's usually where fossil fuels are. Digging, drilling, and blasting are often the only ways to get at them.
It's a risky business, but worth the risk. Without abundant supplies of affordable energy, our economy would grind to a halt. It may be in bad shape now, but we'll have no economy at all if energy is made artificially scarce and prohibitively expensive.
Capricious regulations issued by ideologically-motivated federal bureaucrats are not the only thing undermining the mining efforts. Dubious lawsuits from some lucre-loving plaintiffs' attorneys take a toll, too.
Weitz & Luxenberg, a New York-based personal injury law firm, is sponsoring a plaintiffs' fair or "open forum" for Marshall County residents to drum up clients for suits against West Virginia gas drillers, some critics believe.
The firm says it just wants to air citizen concerns. If you are among those who seem to be open to helping destroy what's left of our state's energy industry, be sure to attend.