We have enough coal in the ground to provide our energy need for the next century. Of course the left knows this so they worked to keep it in the ground.
Reasonable environmental concerns should be noted, but the extreme rules that all but kill the coal industry does nothing but harm us.
There is oil off the coast of California. Open up drilling. There have been oil wells in California since oil was first discovered. What is the harm in drilling more wells? The harm is only to our own economy.
So the first thing that needs to be to become more energy independent it to cut back on all these extreme environmental laws.
This may have a side benefit, cutting funding to terrorist organization.
“So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it’s just that it will bankrupt them, because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted,” Obama said during a 2008 interview with the San Francisco Chronicle’s editorial board.
“Under my plan of a cap-and-trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad,” Obama said in 2008. “Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, they would have to, uh, retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.”
http://dailycaller.com/2015/08/03/flashback-2008-obama-promised-to-bankrupt-coal-companies/
I remember an old ad series put out by the coal industry in the mid-late 1970’s, the title line read:
The US has more coal than the middle east has oil. Let’s DIG IT!
I remember seeing it in a current (at the time) National Geographic.
A recent report by the U.S. Government Accountability Office estimated that if half of the oil bound up in the rock of the Green River Formation could be recovered it would be "equal to the entire world's proven oil reserves."
Both the GAO and private industry estimate the amount of oil recoverable to be 3 trillion barrels.
"In the past 100 years — in all of human history -- we have consumed 1 trillion barrels of oil. There are several times that much here," said Roger Day, vice president for operations for American Shale Oil (AMSO).