Staying true to his moniker as most liberal member of the Senate President Obama today, makes good on a campaign promise he made about bankrupting the coal industry.

Here come Carbon Caps

The choice to make the issue a fixture at the task force’s first summit — administration officials asked EDF to hold off on releasing the study so it could coincide with today’s meeting — is meant to grease the path for passing legislation in Congress to create a federal emissions trading system that puts a mandatory cap on carbon dioxide pollution. Such a bill, which Obama has asked for, is sure to meet resistance. It was a non-starter in a Republican Congress, where GOP members said it would decimate the economy and cause job loss. And although Democrats now hold the majority, those representing manufacturing states have held fast to the argument that an emissions cap would harm their local economies.

Remember this?

Let me sort of describe my overall policy.

What I’ve said is that we would put a cap and trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else’s out there.

I was the first to call for a 100% auction on the cap and trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted down caps that are being placed, imposed every year.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can. It’s just that it will bankrupt them because they’re going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that’s being emitted.

That will also generate billions of dollars that we can invest in solar, wind, biodiesel and other alternative energy approaches.

The only thing I’ve said with respect to coal, I haven’t been some coal booster. What I have said is that for us to take coal off the table as a ideological matter as opposed to saying if technology allows us to use coal in a clean way, we should pursue it.

So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can.

It’s just that it will bankrupt them.

As Dave Hinz said when this video was first released during the campain:

Sen Obama talks about “Cap and Trade” and then goes on to say that under his administration an energy company could build a coal fired power plant, but he guarantees it will be bankrupted for doing it.

Sen Obama is against nuclear power, he is against oil exploration and he is against coal. I have news for everyone, there are not enough windmills to power our present energy needs much less our future energy needs.

This guy is death to the American economy.