coal, congress, and your money

Here is a news article on a subject that I find of great interest.

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CONGRESS_POWER_PLANT?SITE=OHWIL&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT

This story has many interesting details but I find the section below most significant:

Recognizing this dead end, just last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., wrote the Architect of the Capitol with another recycled idea: convert the plant entirely to natural gas.

While four times more expensive than coal, natural gas produces about half as much carbon dioxide.

Referring to the facility as a shadow hanging over efforts to make Congress more environmentally friendly, the leaders said the conversion would demonstrate Congress' willingness to deal with global warming, energy independence and the use of finite fossil fuels.

According to this story Congress is willing to spend 4 times more for fuel by switching to natural gas. Also in the last sentence we learn that Congress is considering solving the problem of using a finite fossil fuel by switching from coal the fossil fuel that is most abundant to natural gas another fossil fuel which has a much lower quantity of known reserves.