Calls continue for W.Va. to address future of coal issue, climate change

CHARLESTON -- The future of West Virginia coal hinges on state leaders recognizing that the federal government has joined much of the rest of the world in seeking to cut carbon emissions, lawmakers were told Tuesday.

But Manik Roy, the Pew Center's congressional affairs director, said that no easy answers await the Mountain State regarding the most cost effective way to reduce the fossil fuel's greenhouse gas output.

West Virginia remains the nation's second-largest producer of coal, which supplies half the country's electricity. Roy predicted that it will remain a key fuel source for the U.S., both because of its domestic abundance and because it's powering such emerging global competitors as China and India.

"It's cheap. It's plentiful. We're going to burn it," Roy told lawmakers, on hand for the ongoing budget session, and others attending the two-hour presentation.

But at least 23 other states have taken part in regional bids to tackle carbon emissions, Roy said. These involve cap-and-trade programs, in which industries buy and sell "credits" covering several greenhouse gases in the hopes of curbing emission levels.

Just over half the states, meanwhile, have adopted minimum benchmarks for harnessing such renewable energy sources as wind and solar power. These and other factors help thwart efforts to build additional coal-fired power plants in the U.S., he said.

Besides cap-and-trade, Roy cited efforts to pump carbon gases underground as coal is consumed for fuel. But he said the quest for "clean coal" technologies must involve both federal funding to aid research and development, and a willing industry.

"The private sector needs to convince investors that this makes economic sense," Roy said.

Tuesday's skeptics included Delegate Ray Canterbury. The Greenbrier County Republican said Roy had misled his audience by asserting that mainstream, peer-reviewed science had reached consensus regarding the larger questions surrounding climate change.

Rejecting Roy's efforts to support that premise, Canterbury argued that nature influences global climate, not man. He also alleged that the Earth is trending toward warmer temperatures no more than it was as recently as 1,000 years ago.

"In the history of science, the common opinion sort of has a bad history. It's always failed," Canterbury told Roy. "The science is, in my opinion, highly controversial."

Roy's presentation coincided with a new National Research Council report that links continuing global warming with such future havoc as flooded roads and subways, deformed railroad tracks and weakened bridges.

The European Union, meanwhile, plans to open a two-day summit on global warming Thursday that's expected to include trade sanction warnings to the U.S. and China if they fail to heed an international accord aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

While not begrudging Canterbury his skepticism, state Environmental Protection Secretary Stephanie Timmermeyer urged him and the other lawmakers to consider the national debate.

"It's clear that on the federal level, policymakers are moving forward," she said. "We need to consider, as policymakers in this state, what we're going to do to react to that fact."

Roy had earlier cited how President Bush has come around on the issue. He quoted from a September speech in which Bush called on the U.S. to "lead the world to produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions," though in a way "that does not undermine economic growth."

"This to me was a huge sign that the science was becoming compelling," Roy said.

Others in the audience argued that the world must stop burning coal altogether, to reverse global warming. Sen. Jon Blair Hunter questioned why Pew has not sought alternatives to mountaintop removal mining.

"We're just going to continue to destroy what we have in the ground, to preserve what we have in the air," said Hunter, D-Monongalia.