Coal CPR

Another Gift for Yesterday

Every time I think I’ve seen the last taxpayer-funded rescue mission for a dying industry, Washington finds a shovel and starts digging again.

This time it’s coal.

Apparently, after decades of technological change, market competition, and mounting environmental costs, somebody looked at America’s energy future and concluded that what we really need is more nineteenth-century fuel. That’s the sort of visionary thinking that would have investors pouring money into horse-drawn carriages and rotary telephones.

As a progressive, I keep hearing lectures about fiscal responsibility from people who suddenly become enthusiastic spenders whenever a politically-favored industry wanders into trouble. The free market is treated like sacred scripture right up until coal executives need a government lifeline. Then we’re all expected to gather around the public treasury and sing hymns to corporate welfare.

The latest proposal to funnel hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars toward coal strikes me as the economic equivalent of installing a brand-new roof on a building scheduled for demolition.

Meanwhile, renewable energy keeps getting treated like an unwanted houseguest. Offshore wind projects face delays. Clean energy incentives are slashed. Solar development encounters obstacles. The industries creating many of tomorrow’s jobs are told to wait outside while coal gets escorted to the front of the line.

It’s almost impressive.

Imagine being so committed to the past that you look at wind turbines generating electricity and think, “No thanks, let’s subsidize smokestacks instead.”

The absurdity would be funny if it weren’t expensive.

Coal isn’t struggling because environmentalists cast a magic spell on it. Coal is struggling because energy markets evolved. Utilities discovered cheaper options. Technology moved forward. Investors followed the numbers. Consumers increasingly demanded cleaner power.

That’s how progress works.

What bothers me most is the dishonesty of the sales pitch. We’re told these subsidies are about protecting working families. Funny how working families are always mentioned right before wealthy interests receive public money.

Nobody seems eager to discuss the higher electricity costs, the environmental damage, the air pollution, or the public health consequences. Those details are quietly swept aside while politicians pose heroically beside an industry that has spent years losing ground to cleaner alternatives.

Climate change isn’t some distant science-fiction subplot. Communities are already paying the price through extreme weather, rising costs, damaged infrastructure, and growing environmental instability. Yet instead of accelerating investment in renewable energy, we’re debating whether taxpayers should bankroll another round of coal nostalgia.

That isn’t leadership.

It’s panic disguised as tradition.

I want my tax dollars invested in the future. I want clean energy jobs, modern infrastructure, renewable power, and policies that recognize reality instead of arguing with it. I want an economy that competes with the next century, not one that keeps trying to resurrect the last two.

Coal had its chapter in American history. Nobody can erase that.

But history books belong on shelves, not in charge of national energy policy.

The future is knocking on the front door. Washington keeps sneaking around back trying to wake the ghosts.