Coal company vows to fight EPA climate rule

Coal mining giant Murray Energy Corp. had pledged to fight the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed rules to limit carbon emissions from power plants.

While not committing to filing a lawsuit to challenge the rule, Murray spokesman Gary Broadbent said Wednesday that the rules, along with other climate change rules from the Obama administration, are illegal.

{mosads}“The Obama administration’s proposed cap-and-tax mandates are absolutely illegal and will destroy millions of jobs, cripple the American economy, and cause massive blackouts in this country,” Broadbent said.

“We will take all available measures to obtain expedited judicial review of these illegal actions and to combat these fundamentally flawed and economically devastating cap-and-tax mandates,” he continued.

In an interview with West Virginia Executive magazine last month, Murray Chief Executive Officer Bob Murray said climate change is a lie and the EPA has no authority to regulate greenhouse gases.

“They are not telling hardly any truth about the science,” he said. “The earth has actually cooled over the last 17 years, so under the Data Quality Act, they’ve actually been lying about so-called global warming.”

Murray sees the rule as part of Obama’s “war on coal.” His company filed a lawsuit in April to fight a Labor Department rule that limits the amount of coal dust to which miners can be exposed.

Patrick Morrisey, West Virginia’s attorney general, said last week that the EPA is likely to face a lawsuit over the rules, and should withdraw them.

EPA Chief Gina McCarthy met with utility company leaders earlier this week at a meeting of the Edison Electric Institute in an effort to allay their fears, Energywire reported.