This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Tuesday, October 9, 2012. I'm Caleb Brown.

In 2008, then a candidate Obama said he wanted to make coal-generated electricity very expensive, but has

his administration actually undertaken a true war on coal.

Jerry Taylor, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, comments.

I'm from Kentucky and a great deal of the discussion in Kentucky with respect to the Obama administration has been coal and of course they point

to the comment that you made earlier that President Obama may or President then candidate

Obama made about trying to make coal far more expensive and

to essentially make new coal-fired power plants prohibitively expensive.

So what has been the record with respect to this administration on coal?

Well in 2008 we produce 1.17 million metric short tons of coal.

In 2011 we produce 1.09 million metric short tons of coal. So coal

production is slightly down under this administration but not remarkably so.

Most of that decline in fact virtually all of it even if

you ask the industry has absolutely nothing to do with regulations or from the

EPA or Obama initiated wars on the coal industry, it has to do with shale gas.

shale gas now, thanks to hydraulic fracking, it has driven natural gas prices down so low that

coal can't compete with gas firepower, nor can nuclear

energy compete with gas firepower, nor can anything compete with gas firepower.

If there is a dagger pointed at the heart of this industry, it's courtesy of shale gas, something

that Romney champions.

I'm not saying you shouldn't champion it, but the idea that the bulk of the responsibility

for shutdowns in coal mines, for retrofits from coal

...