West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin did not take kindly to Joe Biden bragging about closing coal mines during his speech on Friday in San Diego.
Biden said, “I was in Massachusetts about a month ago on the site of the largest old coal plant in America. Guess what? It cost them too much money. No one is building new coal plants because they can’t rely on it, even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of their existence of the plant. So it’s going to become a wind generation,” Biden added. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”
In fact, coal is incredibly cheap. It’s government regulations that make it ruinously expensive to burn — a fact our addled old president failed to mention.
Manchin called Biden’s words “offensive and disgusting.”
“Let me be clear, this is something the President has never said to me. Being cavalier about the coal jobs for men and women in West Virginia and across the country who literally put their lives on the line to help build and power this country is offensive and disgusting,” Manchin said. “The President owes these incredible workers an immediate and public apology and it is time he learn a lesson that his words matter and have consequences.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The stupidity of Biden’s comments comes just as the northeastern United States is about to experience an energy shortage. Bragging about closing a coal mine in favor of wind power — an energy source that will do absolutely nothing to heat people’s homes this winter — is about as dumb as Biden has been in public.
Biden had visited a former coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts in July. The former Brayton Point power plant in Somerset is shifting to offshore wind power manufacturing, and Biden chose it as the embodiment of the transition to clean energy that he is seeking, including in the sweeping climate-and-health law he passed with Manchin’s help in August.
Former President Donald Trump promised to revive coal and restore mining jobs, but the industry’s decadelong decline continued as utilities increasingly turn to cheaper natural gas — and now renewable energy such as wind and solar power — to generate electricity. The Energy Information Administration, a government agency, reports a yearly average of 39,518 employees at U.S. coal mines in 2021, compared with 91,611 in 2011, 51,795 in 2016 and 42,159 in 2020. Wyoming is the leader in coal production.
Related: German Energy Company Demolishes Wind Turbines to Ramp Up Coal Mining
When are Biden and other western leaders going to start speaking the truth about this “transition” to “renewables”? California is giving us an excellent sneak peek at our future; brownouts, blackouts, massively expensive fossil fuels, and the overselling of the ability of “renewables” to fulfill our energy needs.
But they won’t do it. Instead of being hailed as “Green Warriors,” they would be vilified for their stupidity.
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