To the editor:
A polar vortex causes Zanesville temperatures to plunge to -20 degrees and you have no electricity to heat your home. Shivering, you contact the power company and find the energy market has been discombobulated by the EPA's carbon regulations, which caused the closure of coal-fired power plants that account for 90 percent of Ohio's electrical generation. Blackouts are happening all across Ohio. Several people have died in house fires and from carbon monoxide poisoning because they are using makeshift heaters. Is this scenario in our future, or will people contact their congressman and senators to call off this nonsense?
Why is the EPA on a crusade to wreak the Ohio economy through carbon dioxide emission regulations on coal power plants when carbon dioxide emissions from America's coal power plants are minuscule compared with other sources of emission, and closing such plants would not make a dent in atmospheric carbon dioxide.
During his testimony at the EPA hearing, Bonner Cohen estimated all forms of human activities account for 4 percent of the carbon dioxide emissions worldwide, which includes respiration. Cohen estimates carbon dioxide emissions from America's coal-fired plants would be perhaps .01 percent of the total.
Evidence is lacking of man-produced global warming to justify savaging Ohio's economy. Recent subzero temperatures in Zanesville might portend a cooling cycle instead. The U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges global temperatures have not shown warming since 1998. The Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics concluded by 2003, "The 20th century is neither the warmest century nor the century with the most extreme weather in the past 1,000 years."
Ninety percent (per Ohio Coal Development Office) of Ohio's electric power is generated by coal. Shutting down coal power plants would therefore savage the Ohio economy and cause drastic rate hikes?
Therefore, to avoid catastrophe, ask State Rep. Brian Hill and Sen. Troy Balderson to suspend EPA's regulatory authority in Ohio by a nullification action.
Gary Woodburn, Zanesville