Was nixed coal plant Marshalltown’s ‘Get Out of Recession Free’ card?

Conservative Ken Black of the Marshalltown Times-Republican published a column Sunday under the headline, “Elections Have Consequences.”  In it, he criticizes voters for electing Democrats, who he says killed the proposed coal-fired power plant that was set to be built in his city:

We elected a president who said he wants to regulate and tax coal power plants out of existence. Given its the cheapest way to provide energy, other than nuclear, we are all going to pay the price for that one.

We’ve had Democratic governors for more than 10 years now. While Vilsack should be lauded for his emphasis on more power generation in Iowa at the beginning of this decade, it certainly wasn’t a policy that continued.

Those governors have the ability to appoint members to the Iowa Utilities Board who can make prudent business decisions. Or, they can support members who lament that trees were cut down to produce the paper for the reports they are reviewing.

Those members can rely on pseudoscience, if not outright science fiction, and somehow feel good about the choices they make.

This power plant was Marshalltown’s “Get Out of Recession Free” card and Free Parking jackpot all in one. Now, we’re not even going to pass Go and get our $200.

Black’s main assertion, that the power plant construction project would have been Marshalltown’s “Get Out of Recession Free” card, is almost laughable.  The real economy is not a board game, and to pretend that any one construction project would allow a city to escape the global economic meltdown seems naive.

Of course, because the power plant is not likely to be built anytime soon, Marshalltown may never know if the coal plant would have saved it from recession.  Black’s real hope is that his readers will head to the polls in two years with an extra reason to blame Democrats for their economic woes.

But is there any reason to assume that under a President John McCain, things would be different?

McCain and some other Republicans have supported so-called “cap and trade” plans to halt carbon emissions just like President Barack Obama and the Democrats.  While the two presidential candidates’ plans for capping carbon emissions certainly varied, both shared the same basic principles.  There’s no guarantee that the federal regulatory outlook would be much different if McCain had won.

In fact, Obama was as strident a supporter of the coal industry as anyone during the 2008 campaign.  Lines from his campaign speeches are currently being used in nationally televised “Clean Coal” ads, which are paid for by coal companies.

Just a few paragraphs after bemoaning the use of “pseudoscience” (presumably referring to either climate change or air quality studies?), Black makes a thoroughly scientific argument of his own:

We’ve heard the arguments – that those of us who are for the plant are worried more about money than our family’s safety. Well, right now, we live in the shadow of a coal plant that is far “dirtier” than the one that was proposed.

I can’t name one person who has died or gotten sick because of that fact. Neither can they.

I can’t name one person who would have escaped the global recession if only the proposed Marshalltown coal plant project had moved forward.  Can you?