With new coal industry regulations forthcoming from the Environmental Protection Agency,  New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Michael Brune of the Sierra Club campaign advocate “ending our [national] reliance on coal,” prompting Steve Miller of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity to warn that the environmentalist efforts to move the country “Beyond Coal” would leave the nation “beyond jobs, economic growth, energy security and global competitiveness.”

Bloomberg and Brune, of course, anticipate this kind of criticism in their column, which leads with claims about negative health effects of coal before trying to undercut the economic value of coal and assure readers that clean solar and wind energies provides jobs for “2.7 million workers in the clean-tech sector.”