Why are taxpayers subsidizing coal power?

P ut this in the slap-your- fore head category.

Congress is finally recognizing the need to limit the greenhouse gas emissions that speed climate change. That means, among other things, limiting the construction of conventional coal-fired power plants.

But a Depression-era rural electrification program funded by taxpayers is being used to subsidize the construction of as much as $35 billion worth of conventional coal-fired power plants spewing carbon dioxide.

The new plants envisioned in the next decade by the nation’s rural electric cooperatives, the Washington Post reports, would offset all state and federal efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over that time.

This is sheer idiocy. What’s worse, Americans who support climate-change solutions are unwillingly contributing their tax dollars to promote coal-fired power.

When the nation’s economy collapsed in the 1930s, the U.S. Agriculture Department’s Rural Utilities Service – part of the New Deal – did a world of good by helping bring electricity to impoverished farming areas with few financial resources. The service provided low-interest loans to rural electric cooperatives.

But now the service is a dinosaur, one that somehow thrives even though the justification for the program has largely disappeared. Many of the nation’s 800 utility co-ops serve suburban areas and other prospering locals that hardly bring to mind the picture of a farmer and his plow.

Areas served by co-ops, the Post reported, include the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, the Atlanta area and places such as Branson, Mo., the country-music capital that boasts 17,000 hotel rooms, a 17-story luxury condominium complex, shopping malls and scads of theaters.

The conservative Heritage Foundation singles out the co-op loan program as an egregious example of government waste. A 2004 Heritage report said “the basic clientele are well-to-do people who have nothing to do with agriculture.”

The program’s environmental foes point out that the low-cost loans remove incentives for the co-ops to seek cleaner sources of energy.

To its credit, the Bush administration’s Office of Budget and Management wants to stop the loans for new power plants and limit other aspects of the program.

But the administration is up against a powerful co-op lobby that dispenses millions in political contributions. Lawmakers from states where co-ops are abundant are loath to risk their seats by supporting reform.

If Congress can’t summon the nerve to curb sacred cows like rural electrification co-ops, then the only answer is stiff carbon taxes that reflect the true environmental costs of coal-fired power.