If allowed to stand, Friday's ruling by the Obama administration that severely limits carbon emissions from new coal-fired power plants will be a devastating blow to one of our nation's most plentiful supplies of energy.

It also will ensure the continuing demise of Kentucky's coal industry by making it economically unfeasible to build a new power plant in this country.

And this is only the beginning. Just wait until EPA Czar Gina McCarthy issues her dictates for existing plants next year.

To give you an idea of how unreasonable Friday's dictum is, the most efficient coal plants currently in operation emit at a rate of at least 1,800 pounds of CO2 per MWh. McCarthy's new rules would require plants to limit emissions to 1,100 pounds of CO2 per MW.

Reuters reported that McCarthy Friday "described her commitment to cleaner air in sometimes emotional terms, focused on the impact of pollution on public health."

'It's not just the elderly who suffer from air pollution. So do children - especially children in lower income and urban communities," she said. "If your child doesn't need an inhaler, then you are one very lucky parent.'

"I bet the families of thousands and thousands of Kentucky coal miners who have lost their jobs since Jan. 1, 2012 could describe their ordeal in emotional terms.

And unlike the ideologue McCarthy's statements, which offer fake tears and even flakier defensive statements about the extreme radical views of her and her boss and his administration, their emotion would be as real as their economic pain.

Ironically, the very people that McCarthy claims the Obama administration's extremist views will protect -- "children in lower income and urban communities" -- will be the very ones most hurt by her radicalism.

They will be the ones most unable to pay the higher electricity rates produced by the oppressive environmental policies of this administration. As a result, "the children" will be denied the access to prosperity that cheap energy offers.