In fact, almost all of the states that are politically liberal and vote unfailingly Democratic are low coal use states. Washington, New York, New Jersey and Connecticut are also in the top 10 states least reliant on coal. Only conservative Idaho is a red state with low coal consumption.
Meanwhile, the heavy coal using states bleed red. West Virginia, Kentucky and Wyoming are all states that get about 90 percent of their electric power from coal. Missouri, Utah, Indiana and North Dakota also get 75 percent of their electricity from coal. See table.
Mr. Obama announced last week the toughest environmental regulations ever against coal. This is part of the president's war on coal that he announced when he was running for president in 2008. He has long admitted these policies to reduce emissions from coal burning electric power plants by one-third below 2005 levels by 2030 will "bankrupt" the coal industry. It's working. Coal towns are being vaporized across America and coal companies are going out of business.
But the pain from the new EPA rules won't be evenly distributed across America. Far from it. The coal producing states like West Virginia and Wyoming will see massive job losses and increases in electric utility costs. The nationwide costs will be about $100 billion a year eventually or a reduction in GDP by about one-half percentage point, the Heritage Foundation finds. But for heavily impacted states -- Republican areas in the Midwest, South and mountain states -- the costs will reach about $1,200 a year to average families. Mr. Obama's policies that have had such a crushing effect on middle-income family finances are about to get a whole lot worse.
The liberal coastal states will feel only modest effects because they don't use much coal.
Champ said before he was elected he was going to "make it impossible for coal mining to survive" and he's done just that. He knows exactly whom he is targeting and why.