God, Satan and the Environmentalists

The coal mine tragedy in West Virginia is in the news. It is already morphing from a story of anxious relatives, grieving co-workers and community to one of the need for more government regulation for safety, and (who knew?), the dangers of fossil fuels. Let's forget for a moment that we Americans could save 2,000 to 3,000 lives a year by just raising the legal driving age to 18; what clout in Washington DC would that have? So whatever the hoopla or spin by the media, it isn't rooted in concern for the lives of the miners and their families and way of life in Appalachia.

Turn the page of the newspaper to the World Bank investing $3.75 billion to finance a coal fired power plant in South Africa. Notice the global spread of personal names and titles--Hitachi Power (Germany), Eskom Holdings (South Africa), the African National Congress, and S. Vijay Iyer (India) of the World Bank. This investment has the support of China, India, Brazil, and the African country members of the World Bank. Not so much the United States, which owns a lot but not enough to fight the rest.

I do love this quote by Mamatho Netsianda (who claims he answers to no white man) of Chancellor House Holdings, the investment arm of the African National Congress, which has a 25% stake in the new coal fired Hitachi Power. "I don't care who our shareholders are--whether it's God, Satan or the ANC--I'm running the company in accordance with South African law." Lucky he doesn't have a part African statist president changing all the rules as he goes along in order to by-pass both the laws of the nation and the power of the Congress at the expense of the shareholders.