A controversial Supreme Court decision on the EPA regulation of greenhouse gases could help kill the coal business, says scientist Leighton Steward, chairman of the non-profit environmental group Plants Need C02.
"It would require the stationary sources to have 30 percent less CO2 . . . emitted by these new coal plants . . . and the technology to do that is not commercially available at this time," Steward told "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
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"It may be available in 10 to 15 years, but they know if they do this, they will achieve what President [Barack] Obama said when he was originally running for president . . . that he would bankrupt the coal industry," he said Tuesday.
Steward said that fortunately, natural gas supplies in the United States are plentiful.
"That can help us out, but we're crazy to shut down these low-cost coal plants . . . If the plants on earth could vote . . . they'd probably say jeez, let the coal plants go because they put more CO2 in the atmosphere, which is making our good crops grow, our trees grow, the habitats, and ecosystems get more robust."
Steward said carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
"You can go ask any chemistry professor that, or anybody in the commercial industries that are in the chemistry business, and they'll tell you CO2's not a pollutant," he said.
"The government has done it on their own through the EPA . . . [calling] it a dangerous pollutant."
The mission of Plants Need CO2 is to "educate the public on the positive effects of additional atmospheric CO2 and help prevent the inadvertent negative impact to human, plant and animal life if we reduce CO2."
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