Let's meet coal apologist Fred Palmer.

Mr. Palmer is currently the Vice-President for Government Relations of Peabody Coal. But go back a decade or so and Mr. Palmer was the head of the so-called Western Fuels Association, a front group for the coal industry. In that capacity, he said something in an interview that could best be described as, well, revelatory:

Every time you turn your car on, and you burn fossil fuels and you put CO2 in the air, you're doing the work of the Lord, absolutely.

Now, it would have been easy to walk this back and claim that it was a joke, or a one-time exaggeration designed to emphasize the importance of the fossil fuel industry to the American economy. But at a recent debate held at Washington University in St. Louis with Bruce Nilles of the Sierra Club, a student asked him to clarify his remark of 10 years earlier, and was met with a series of obfuscations (fast forward to the 54.16 mark), and, when pushed by Nilles to actually answer the question, refused to say if he still stands by the remark.

Now, the only reason anyone would act that way is if they actually believed and stood by the original comment, but were too embarrassed to admit to such in a public forum. And given the fact that the aforementioned Western Fuels Association created a front group and even made a documentary making the case that an increase in CO2 in the atmosphere would be of great benefit to humanity.

Now, let's take a look at the conservative estimate of the impact of CO2 in the atmosphere, as documented by the IPCC:

The impact will be catastrophic, forcing hundreds of millions of people to flee their devastated homelands, particularly in tropical, low-lying areas, while creating waves of immigrants whose movements will strain the economies of even the most affluent countries. 'The really chilling thing about the IPCC report is that it is the work of several thousand climate experts who have widely differing views about how greenhouse gases will have their effect. Some think they will have a major impact, others a lesser role. Each paragraph of this report was therefore argued over and scrutinised intensely. Only points that were considered indisputable survived this process. This is a very conservative document - that's what makes it so scary,' said one senior UK climate expert.

Hmm...sounds a lot like armageddon! Now, there are people who are actively dedicated to making the Book of Revelations a reality, but they're usually restricted to things like fundamentalist cattle ranchers in Texas breeding a perfect red heifer for sacrifice on the Temple Mount. Palmer's perspective is far more frightening. Here we have somebody whose motivations to promote the coal industry aren't simply a matter of greed or economics. It's a principle born equally, if not primarily, out of religious zealotry.

And he's not the only one. Texas Governor Rick Perry's first reaction to the calamity now occurring in the Gulf of Mexico was that it was an "act of God." And while he later walked back that remark ever so slightly, it's still enlightening that Rick Perry's personal god has no issue with unleashing what may well end up being the worst environmental disaster in our history.

Given the causes of the disasters at the Massey coal mine and the unthinkable tragedy currently occurring off our coast--and the efforts of the fossil fuel industry to defend them--it's obvious that the industry is full of people who will sacrifice not just the environment, but hardworking American lives, in the pursuit of short-term profits. But it's also worth asking how many people there are who are dedicated to spewing carbon into the air because they feel it's the element of the Lord.