Obama and Palin clash over coal and carbon trading

As US polling stations begin to open today, the rival candidate's energy and climate change policies have again been thrown into the spotlight, following accusations over the weekend from Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin that Barack Obama plans to bankrupt the US coal industry.

Citing an interview Obama gave in January to the San Franciso Chronicle, Palin told a campaign rally in Ohio that the Democrat candidate had admitted his proposals for a carbon cap and trade plan would bankrupt US coal-fired power plants.

In the interview, which was posted on YouTube over the weekend, Obama explained that his plans to cap carbon emissions at 80 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050 as part of a carbon emissions cap and trade scheme would impose extra costs on carbon intensive industries, such as coal.

"So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can," he said. " It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted."

Seizing on the comments, Palin said that the Democrat's proposals would kill the US coal industry. "In an Obama-Biden administration, there would be no use for coal at all, from Wyoming to Colorado, to West Virginia and Ohio," she said, adding that rival vice presidential candidate Joe Biden had also been caught on camera earlier in the campaign pledging that no new coal-fired power stations would be built in the US.

The Obama campaign said that Palin had taken the Senator's comments out of context, pointing out that he also said in the interview that "this notion of no coal, I think is an illusion," and had expressed his support for clean coal and carbon capture technologies that would allow the US to "use coal without emitting greenhouse gases and carbon".

Some commentators also accused Palin and McCain of being less than candid about the likely impact of their own proposed cap-and-trade scheme, which, while aiming for more modest emission cuts than those put forward by Obama, would impose a similar level of extra costs on coal-fired power stations.