Obama: My Regulations Aren’t Killing Coal; Fracking Is

[excerpt]

O'DONNELL: "When you think about coal, mt grandfather came from Ireland. He worked in the coal plants in Pennsylvania and the EPA rule means no more coal plants. Isn't that a destruction of great American industry? I mean, people who have these jobs today, tens and tens of thousands of them say that's going to hurt the economy."
OBAMA: "You know, the irony is that what's actually hurt coal is not any EPA rules as much as it is any really cheap natural gas that has come from fracking, a new technology that we developed that allowed the United States to become the leading producer of natural gas in the world. And those natural gas fired plants are no so much more efficient that even if there were no rules whatsoever coal would be replaced by natural gas in terms of generating electricity. Natural gas is little cleaner than coal and what we are saying in the same way that natural gas has replaced a lot coal fire plants. Well, let's see if we can do something similar with solar, and the wind, and the hydro, and other clean energies that are sustainable over the long term."