Alabama’s future

It’s good to know that down in Montgomery, the first capital of the Confederacy, they’re still resisting Northern Aggression. “We will not stand for what they are doing to our way of life in Alabama,” declared Twinkle Cavanaugh, president of the Alabama Public Service Commission, on Monday. “”We will take our fight to the EPA.”

Chimed in Commissioner-elect Chip Beeker, “Who has the right to take what God’s given a state?”

In case you haven’t figured it out, what has gotten the PSC to fussing is the federal effort to emancipate America from coal, specifically via President Obama’s proclamation of a 30 percent reduction of carbon emissions from power plants by 2030. Some would say this is too little too late, but in Alabama coal has been a way of life ever since 1815, when soldiers coming back from the Battle of New Orleans found the black stuff alongside rivers in the middle of the state.

Some would also say that Alabama’s way of life is less threatened by the loss of coal jobs and a hike in electricity rates coming from the North than by coal-fired climate change coming from the South. Two months ago, in an article titled “Alabama’s Climate Change Deniers Refuse to Save the State,” Bloomberg Businessweek published the above representation of what the state will look like if present weather trends continue–and yes, it looks like the first capital of the Confederacy will be under water.

But not to worry. the state’s official climatologist, John Christy of the U. of A. at Huntsville, says it ain’t gonna happen.

And just in case, the PSC is doing what it can to make sure God is on its side. Miss Twinkle, who invited her favorite preacher to give the invocation at a PSC meeting on power rates a year ago (he denounced same-sex marriage), expressed the hope that “all the citizens of Alabama will be in prayer that the right thing will be done.”

Amen.