Jim Martin: “The President is ignoring an inconvenient truth: coal saves lives!”

(Alexandria, Virginia) — The 60 Plus Association, America’s largest right-leaning seniors organization representing more than 7.2 million older Americans, today issued a response to President Obama’s draft Climate and Health Assessment report, which is being used to rally public support for his unpopular Climate Change agenda.

With polls showing the American public overwhelmingly skeptical about the President’s Climate Change rhetoric, and unwilling to accept skyrocketing electricity bills that will result from his EPA’s strict and massively expensive regulations on coal-fired power plants, Obama is now issuing statements on public health, claiming his environmental agenda will save lives.

Said 60 Plus Chairman and Founder Jim Martin in response:

“Once again the President’s radical ideology is off base and swimming upstream against the facts. America just emerged from one of the coldest winters in our history. And what source of energy did the majority of Americans use to keep warm? Coal! Whether it was seniors on fixed incomes, barely able to put food on the table and pay for their prescriptions, the working poor struggling to keep their  families safe, businesses, hospitals — the answer to over a hundred million Americans making it through a brutal chill is coal.

“The President has promised that his ideological quest to cut the use of coal will send electric bills skyrocketing, up 10%, 20%, even more than 30% in some instances. Electric bills fixed-income seniors can’t pay, or skipping meals, medication or trips to the doctor’s office is the biggest threat to the health of the elderly – not affordable coal energy. The coal industry has invested more than $120 billion to cut emission rates by 90%. Coal is the answer to greater life-expectancy, not a threat to it.”

Martin was referencing, in part, a United Nations Human Development Index comprised of life-expectancy, education and economic development across the world, development which is correlated with electricity that coal generates. Some measures of human suffering due to lack of worldwide access to affordable electricity include:

• 4 million deaths each year due to respiratory illnesses from using indoor cook stoves;
• 50% of vaccines delivered to developing countries being ruined due to lack of electricity in shipping and storage
• 780 million people not having access to a clean water supply, which requires electricity (2.5 billion lack improved sanitation facilities)

“The evidence is overwhelming and conclusive that coal is the last best hope for the poor and destitute in the world and in our nation. Seniors, the working poor, and average Americans  struggling every day to get by are the targeted victims of Obama’s plan, they will suffer the most.  He can distort the facts all he wants, but the inconvenient truth remains: coal saves lives!”

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