COLUMN: Coal Fired Power Plants – Stay with Capitalism

The following article reflects the views of only the author and not those of AllOnGeorgia.

By Ken Herron.

The Democrats are pressing the Global Warming Theory. They are pushing the USA to stop using fossil fuels such as coal, oil, natural gas, and gasoline. President Obama was determined to shut down all of the coal fired electric generating plants in the USA. He also would not approve drilling for additional oil on public land. He even blocked new pipelines to deliver the oil. Many of the coal mines were closed and many of the coal fired generating plants were converted to natural gas. The major problem from generating electricity using coal to produce steam to run turbines is the CO2 (Carbon Dioxide) produced by the burning coal. In 1882 Thomas Edison built the first coal fired electric power plant in New York City. From that time most of the electric power was generated by coal fired plants.

In 2016 Coal was producing 30.4% of the electricity while natural gas was producing 33.8% and Nuclear was producing 19.7%. By 2018 coal had fallen to 27.4% of electricity produced. More coal fired plants have been converted to natural gas during President Trumps two years in office than during the entire 8 years of President Obama. The replacement power units are using the lower priced shale natural gas. The transportation of natural gas by pipeline is much less expensive than hauling coal on trains.

Those who are old enough to remember the last Global Weather Change about 50 years ago will recall this. The gas Freon that was escaping from air conditioners was causing an ozone layer to form around the earth that was preventing the sunlight from getting through to the earth. This was causing a drop in temperatures and was eventually going to cause freezing temperatures that would end life on earth. Freon was also the gas that was used as a propellant for pressure spray cans that sprayed hair spray and other products. Even today many people buy pump sprays instead of pressure cans for things they wish to spray. Whether the actions taken prevented the temperature from lowering or whether the weather change was a natural occurrence we never found out. The temperature cooling stopped.

The land area of the USA is just above 3.9 million square miles. This is just under two percent of the land area in the entire world. To think that things that we have done in our two percent of the earth has effected the entire world is just a little bit ridiculous. The Democrats with their Green Plan have many goals they would like for us to achieve. If we spend trillions of dollars reaching them it will only effect two percent of the atmosphere in the world. The global warming conferences that have been held have resulted in many of the nations of the world promising to take action.

When you look at these nations several years later they never took the actions and nothing has changed. The global weather patterns have not improved. The simple fact is that the USA has air that is as clean as any country in the world and the water in the USA that is piped into the homes is suitable for human consumption. Many countries in the world do not have these things. Clean water is one of the things that raises the health standards of a country. So many diseases are prominent because of dirty water sources.

What is the one thing that has brought clean water to the USA? Strangely it has been the economic system of the United States. Capitalism creates the system where individuals can be in the plumbing business to make a living and they provide the services necessary to provide a clean water system to everyone. A Socialist country does not provide the incentive to cause these type of things to happen. The profit in capitalism motivates individuals to start businesses and to provide the services that reward the supplier.
In a socialist system individuals are assigned duties to perform.

Motivation is not present in the way that they perform their duties. They work at the level required of them. Everybody works for the government in a socialist society. Women today
in China still seat on a bench and tie knots in rugs the same way they did fifty years ago. In Chattanooga today tufting machines are being built that will duplicate the
same designs so close that when both rugs are on the floor side by side the machine
made product looks better. Even in a capitalist society the people that work for the
government have a different attitude than people that are working in private
industry.

People that work for governments are not looking for efficiencies in the way they perform their duties. They expect to be told what to do and how to do it. Capitalism lives and thrives on entrepreneurs. Men and women who see a problem and design a solution to the problem keep our nation moving. It is not the big organizations that cause our country to prosper. Even the biggest organizations usually started in basements and car garages. Dell Computer is the largest personal computer supplier in the world. They are the largest customer of Federal Express.

Dell started in a car garage not very many years ago. Microsoft founder Bill Gates heard that IBM had developed a personal computer. He approached them about developing an operating system for this computer and they agreed to allow him to develop it. For a time he was the richest man in the world. There are many stories like these that have caused our country to prosper.

The USA has also been a very generous country. The deciding force in the two world wars was the USA. The USA opened its markets to countries that needed to recover from wars and poverty and has raised the living standard of citizens all over the world. Our generosity has led to a serious trade deficit and no one was trying to correct the situation until President Trump was elected. Certainly changing our country to a Socialistic System will not improve our situation. Socialism does not promote generosity and helping the rest of the world.

Capitalistic countries support Christianity in almost all cases. Socialism suppresses Christian worship and holds the country and its government as the god of the nation. The blessings of God has been a major part of the success of the USA.