Please, Baby Jesus, save our soul;

And Oh, Dear Lord, let us burn coal.

AL.com from Alabama reports deep concern by some Alabama officials about the U.S. Government’s EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) plan to reduce carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants by 30%. The tragedy of the commons takes over:

Two members of the Alabama Public Service Commission, a member-elect and an Alabama representative to the Republican National Committee said proposed EPA regulations that aim to reduce power plant carbon emissions by 30 percent represent “an assault on our way of life” and are a purposeful attempt by the Obama administration to kill coal-related jobs. “We will not stand for what they are doing to our way of life in Alabama,” said PSC President Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh. “We will take our fight to the EPA.”

Damn that U.S. government! First they dismantle segregation—also once touted as Alabama’s “way of life,” and now they have the temerity to tell the good people of Alabama that they have to cut back on carbon emissions. God forbid that they cramp their way of life for future generations. After all, didn’t God promise that He wouldn’t destroy the Earth again after Noah’s Flood?

(Only in the South, by the way, will you find someone named Twinkle [ten to one a pedant will do some Googling and find Twinkles elsewhere].)

It gets worse (my emphasis):

At their news conference today Cavanaugh and PSC commissioner-elect Chip Beeker invoked the name of God in stating their opposition to the EPA proposal. Beeker, a Republican who is running unopposed for a PSC seat, said coal was created in Alabama by God, and the federal government should not enact policy that runs counter to God’s plan. “Who has the right to take what God’s given a state?” he said. Cavanaugh called on the people of the state to ask for God’s intervention. “I hope all the citizens of Alabama will be in prayer that the right thing will be done,” she said.

Does it take a biologist to tell them that God didn’t create coal? It came, of course, from aeons of pressure applied to plant material buried in the sediments. And really, a public official asking people to pray? Have they, at long last, no sense of decency?

Yesterday’s Wire also shows a video (below) from July 17 of last year in which Twinkle—I can’t help laughing when I write that—starts her commission’s meeting with a prayer. That, of course, is a flagrant violation of the First Amendment. Here, John Delwin Jordan, a Baptist minister, gives an invocation before a meeting of Alabama’s Public Service Commission. (Alabama is, of course, one of the nation’s most religious states, and it has not escaped my notice that it’s also a heavily dog-loving state.) The YouTubes notes include this:

This Public Service Commission special proceeding in to Alabama Power’s rates took place on Wednesday, July 17 in Montgomery, Ala. This clip was taken from the PSC’s own video.

After an introduction by Twinkle, the invocation begins about 1:50 in:

The YouTube site also has a full transcript, which you might need as the volume is a bit low. It starts like this:

Father, first of all we want to thank you for being a God of laws, for giving us a night’s rest, giving us another day. We thank you for the rain you’ve sent upon our state this month, God. And we pray, Holy Spirit, that you will fall fresh on us, Father, that you will send spiritual rain on each one of us. God, you saw each hand that was raised, know our thoughts, know our needs, you know the intents of our heart. So God, whether there be physical, spiritual, mental, financial needs … meet ’em, cause you’re the Lord our God that healeth thee (?) You’re Jehovah Jireh, our provider. And we give you praise for that. Father, your word says that if any of us thirst, let us drink of the water. And Jesus, we know that you’re the living water. And if we drink of you, we will not thirst again. So God, I pray that you will, um, send spiritual rain upon each one of us, upon our families, upon our churches, upon our cities, upon our state, upon our nation.

Note as well that two minutes in, Jordan asks for a show of hands of how many people believe in prayer (all hands go up) and how many people believe prayer works (all hands go up again). So much for the Sophisticated Theologians’™ claim that prayer isn’t supposed to importune God for favors, but merely allows us to commune with him, or even talk to ourselves.

h/t: Joseph