Coal is the bad guy. At least it is the antagonist in the U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency’s 645-page carbon-emissions plan unveiled in
early June, 2014. In spite of the fact that the 30% reduction in CO2 emissions
from the level in 2005 being set for 2030, critics showed their oligarchic focus
on today by pointing to what the
current likely costs would be. Electric bills increasing $4 or so a month in
West Virginia. Lost jobs—as if the criteria of capital were also those of
labor. In short, short-term inconveniences without a hint of the other side of
the ledger. I submit that this is precisely the element in human nature that
can be likened to the proverbial “seed of its own destruction” in terms of the
future of our species. As menacing as such “reductionism to today” is, the
assumption such as underlies the EPA’s proposal that coal is the definitive
obstacle—and, furthermore—that we are not missing any other huge but invisible danger—is
just as problematic from the standpoint of the species’s survival.
