Americans like “cheap stuff” like coal ‚Äì and that’s okay for people in India who want the same standard of living as those in the U.S. – Pres. Obama declared at a White House screening of Leonardo DiCaprio’s new global warning documentary, “Before the Flood,” on Monday.
Americans like coal because “dirty fuel is cheap,” Obama explained:
“And, look, the economics of energy are extremely complicated. But let me just simplify it as much as possible. Dirty fuel is cheap — because we’ve been doing it a long time, so we know how to burn coal to produce electricity. We know how to burn oil, and we know how to burn gas. And if it weren’t for pollution, the natural inclination of everybody would be to say let’s go with the cheap stuff.”
And, coal energy is fine for countries like India, which haven’t achieved the quality of life we have here in America, Obama said:
“And particularly when it comes to poor countries — you take an example like India, where hundreds of millions of people still don’t have electricity on a regular basis, and they would like to have the standards of living that, if not immediately as high as ours, at least would mean that they’re not engaging in backbreaking work just to feed themselves, or keep warm — it’s completely understandable that their priority is to create electricity for their people.”
But, back in the U.S., Americans are blaming “me and my tree-hugger friends” for ruining their lives and livelihoods with his war on U.S. coal energy, Obama said.
