Home > Coal, Enviro Derangement Syndrome, Steven Milloy > Steven Milloy – yet another thoughtful green-hater – on RFK, Jr. and "coal criminal" Don Blankenship

Steven Milloy – yet another thoughtful green-hater – on RFK, Jr. and "coal criminal" Don Blankenship

Anti-enviro Steven Milloy,adjunct scholar at CEI, author and co-founder of a gadfly free-enterprise fund, has a post up on his Green Hell Blog about some interesting recent remarks by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.   Apparently RFK Jr., at the “Capitol Climate Action” rally held on March 2, said that 

“Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship “should be in jail… for all of eternity,”  and that coal companies Massey Energy, Peabody Energy and Arch Coal are “criminal enterprises.”

It seems clear from the context that RFK Jr. is referring to these firm’s destructive “mountaintop removal” mining practices and the legal and political strong-arming (all the way up to bribing W.Va. supreme court justices) in which the leaders of these politically powerful firm engage, which I have commented on several times.

I’m a bit disappointed that Milloy does not favor his readers with an explanation for why RFK Jr. is wrong, and Milloy closes with these puzzling remarks:

“But if Kennedy wants to oppose coal while honoring his father, perhaps
he ought to adopt RFK’s pro-nuclear stance. According to a March 21,
1967 New York Times article, RFK proposed that the New York
State Power Authority be permitted to develop nuclear power pants and
that private investment in nuclear power be encouraged.”

Milloy’s apparently favorable reference to nuclear power and his faiure to address the real social costs of coal stirred me to make a few comments, which I copy below:

Steve, just a few quick questions:

– are you seriously pushing nuclear power, or just cynically
flogging Kennedy for a technology that energy experts like Cato’s Jerry
Taylor have concluded just aren’t economical without life-support from
government?

http://mises.org/Community/blogs/tokyotom/archive/2009/02/24/cato-s-jerry-taylor-quot-nuclear-power-is-solar-power-for-conservatives-quot-and-nuclear-needs-quot-a-policy-of-tough-love-quot.aspx.

– do you disagree that coal is dirty, and imposes serious impacts on
health and property rights, both when mined and burned? The American
Lung Assn said in 2004 that power plant pollution causes 24,000
premature deaths each year (at least 50% more than annual homicides),
as well as over 550,000 asthma attacks and 38,000 heart attacks
annually.

– States like North Carolina are still suing – and winning – in
federal court to force power producers (like the big, government-owned,
polluting dinosaur TVA bureacracy) to be cleaner:
http://edition.cnn.com/2009/US/01/14/tva.ruling/index.html

Do you love the TVA, and hate North Carolina?

Inquiring minds want your help in figuring out whom to hate, and why.

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