Editor’s note: The following letter is in response to Thomas Euell’s letter “Euell Responds To Nielsen,” published last week.
It has been said that “you are entitled to your own opinion but not to your own facts.” The global price of oil dictates the domestic price of oil and no president, past or present, can lay claim for credit or blame. If it was otherwise, then we would have to assume that, given unlimited supplies of oil, it would be managed for the benefit of the American consumer and not the bottom line of oil companies.
There is no such thing as “clean coal.” It is an integral part of our collective “carbon footprint” and the only cause of black lung disease, which has cost countless of miners their lives and Medicaid millions if not billions of dollars in a preventable disease that causes terrible suffering and premature death.
The only reason to continue mining coal is to keep us locked into a cheap but obsolete form of energy for profit with that healthcare cost going to the American taxpayer. Mr. Euell is among the few left who has not reconciled the causal relationship that exists between our carbon footprint and global warming. Give me a break, Mr. Euell!
Mr. Euell mentions Obamacare derogatorily but fails to mention the connection between Obamacare and Romneycare of Massachusetts — probably just an oversight and a symptom of “Romneysia.” Like it or not, Gov. Mitt Romney authored and signed into law, “the” most successful “affordable healthcare system” in the country and made Massachusetts No. 1 in healthcare delivery systems. When Mr. Romney signed it, he claimed it would save the people of Massachusetts millions of dollars, provide an affordable healthcare system and improve healthcare delivery efficiency. Mr. Obama copied a “weaker” version as a compromise to Republican opposition, at which time Mr. Romney, as a candidate for president, opposed a national version of his own healthcare plan, which was already successful and in place in Massachusetts.
Mr. Euell, your sarcasm is lost and out of place in serious discussion, and no, I never claimed to be an authority on either Mr. Romney or Mr. Obama. But I’m educated, read and apparently, as this election has demonstrated, I have 60 million people who agree with me. You lost the election, Mr. Euell, and it’s time to lose your rancor and move on. It’s time to stop thinking of ourselves as Democrats and Republicans, and start thinking of ourselves as Americans bound by a common purpose.
Richard Nielsen
Royal Palm Beach
The costs associated with “black lung” disease are paid for through Workers’ Compensation benefits by coal mining companies. In other words the cost is not one that taxpayers must pay, unlike the tax dollars that are wasted on solar and electric power.
About 10,000 miners died from it nationwide between 1995 and 2004. There were 388,000 deaths by drowning in 2004 worldwide.
Coal will not be obsolete until wind and solar are practical. If anything these “new” sources of energy are obsolete in that they are too expensive and impractical and cannot possibly replace coal fired energy now or perhaps ever. These are the facts.
Let’s see what Mr. Neilson didn’t respond to. No rebuttal to the “fact” that gas prices were lower during the Bush administration when Neilson was saying that Bush and big oil were conspiring to increase profits.
No rebuttal to the claim that opening federal land for drilling resulted in lower prices for oil. No rebuttal as to the higher gas prices under Obama. Neilson says that gas prices are fixed globally. Not entirely true. Oil is traded in U.S. Dollars. As the dollar value declines oil prices rise, so the price of crude is linked in part to the falling U.S. Dollar. We will have to wait to see what gas prices at the pump do in the next four years.
Black lung is a killer. About 2% of miners have been affected. But Euell’s “facts” were not disputed by Neilson. He has a duty to dispute facts, and if he does not then those facts must be accepted as true.
I’d have to say that Euell is the one with the “facts”.