U.S. Senate Candidate Rand Paul spoke a town hall meeting to discuss the so-called "Cap and Trade" bill in Pikeville.
Paul says the legislation, if passed, would be a disaster for Kentucky.
He also talked about the EPA's decision to hold up 79 mountaintop permits for additional scrutiny.
“I think there's a silent war by Obama, against coal. it's not on the front pages, but you can see it and you can feel in when you're in eastern Kentucky. You talk to anyone who either works in the coal fields or is a supplier for the coal industry, you feel this tension...that the industry is being choked,” Paul said.
The republican eye doctor from Bowling Green says if elected, he would defend the coal industry.
Rand Paul is correct here. There's a much better way to protect the environment then politically charged regulations. And that's private property rights. The property owner cares about the long term value of the property -- including the resale value after he or she is done exhausting the coal from said property. So since there are environmental groups or other bidders that desire mountaintops to stay mountaintops or otherwise care about maintaining the integrity of the other resources, the owner is going to preserve as much of that as is economically feasible and balance that future resale value with the increase or decreased cost of mining.
There's a really short, easy to read book on the subject that I recommend to people on this topic called Free Market Environmentalism
. Capitalism and the Environment work together under a system of private property rights. Another, more involved book about the Environmentalism and Global Warming in particular is The Skeptical Environmentalist: Measuring the Real State of the World
by Bjørn Lomborg, a former Green Peace activist.
Rand Paul
Trey Grayson
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