Business & Politics

Unscrew the burned out incandescents and screw in the CFLs. Job done. Charge more for high rates of water use and less for conservative customers. Job two done. What's next? How about stop government subsidies of Iron-Age style coal-fired electricity plants? Washington Post reports that "A Depression-era program to bring electricity to rural areas is using taxpayer money to provide billions of dollars in low-interest loans to build coal plants even as Congress seeks ways to limit greenhouse gas emissions...The beneficiaries of the government's largesse -- the nation's rural electric cooperatives -- plan to spend $35 billion to build conventional coal plants over the next 10 years, enough to offset all state and federal efforts to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions over that time...the powerful National Rural Electric Cooperative Association deployed 3,000 members on Capitol Hill last week to push Congress to keep the program intact, arguing that the loans for new coal plants are needed to keep electricity cheap and reliable in rural areas." You get the idea. Via:: WaPo Image credit: Documenting the American South, "Down In A Coal Mine"