Via The Dickinson Press: 

The middle-aged man next to me said, “I’m going to lose my job at the mine.”

 The big room at the Bismarck State College Energy Center was filled to standing room only for the public meeting explaining the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Plan. Job loss for North Dakota workers was in the plan — it is clear that our EPA workers in Washington, D.C., are willing to sacrifice jobs for their agenda – but not their jobs, of course.

It was a very controlled and civilized meeting on Monday night, Nov. 16; the bad news had already been laid out at Beulah a few nights prior.

The EPA mandate says they want a 45 percent reduction in CO2 emissions as North Dakota’s contribution to its plan, and they want us to write out the path to our own demise. They, the EPA, are not taking ownership — it will be our plan — so the young man next to me can blame his job loss on his North Dakota neighbor.

What are we thinking? The nation’s economy has been in the ditch for seven years, and we are closing good mines and causing the shutdown of electric power plants, some not yet paid for. Do we just shut them down? Do we let them stand on the land like gravestones for the next generations to gaze at in wonderment? Or will their vision be cluttered with thousands of wind towers that were erected to replace them? Those also shut down as environmentalists wept over the millions of bird carcasses?

Unintended consequences? Dare we ask? When the switch is flipped in the EPA building in Washington, will the light come on?

See the article here.