Sometimes I read about the things Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius says and I wonder how does she arrive at such outlandish conclusions.
An example is in the article Gov. Sebelius gives interview to Grist about KS coal controversy, where our governor says this regarding a proposed coal-fired power plant expansion in Kansas: “Very little of the power that was scheduled to be produced was for Kansas. It actually was electricity that would be exported to Colorado and Texas, yet we would own the carbon. ”
What does it mean to “own the carbon”? I thought it was called global warming, and that the source of the carbon doesn’t matter. It affects the entire globe. That’s why environmentalists in America are concerned about the rapid growth of coal-fired power plants in China. That Chinese carbon — if in fact it affects the global climate — is just as harmful as that produced in Kansas.
So what does it mean to Kansans that “we would own the carbon”?
Then, doesn’t Kansas benefit from exporting things that people in other states want to buy? Perhaps we should stop growing all the excess wheat that Kansans can’t consume themselves and let our wheat fields regress to their native, unplowed state. Perhaps the ancient buffalo habitat around Wichita, now covered with aircraft plants producing airplanes primarily for export out of Kansas, should be restored.
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