If you dream of a near future in which coal mines are abandoned, coal workers are employed in emerging green energy fields, coal executives are feeding at the trough of welfare assistance (and not corporate welfare), and China and India are all too happy to buy our clean technologies at a healthy price … well, then it’s good you didn’t attend this morning’s hearing of the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Climate Change.
I’ll be posting a few entries here detailing the most significant ground Markey’s hearing covered. But the nickel version is that, though everybody from the governor of Wyoming to the wonks at the Center for American Progress think a cap-and-trade program is inevitable, they also think that many, many billions of dollars in subsidies for carbon capture and sequestration technology will be crucial to any greenhouse-gas reduction strategy.
Which is to say that I had a rollicking and hilarious morning!
