The nation's coal industry is in shock today with word that Barack Obama plans to put such severe penalties on coal-fired power plants that it will bankrupt them. A coalition of business leaders says such a move would jeopardize the jobs of hundreds of thousands of people who work in the coal industry.

Senator Obama's plan for putting severe financial penalties on coal-fired power plants has been made public on a YouTube video which contains audio of comments he made in San Francisco in January 2008.

"What I've said is that we would put a cap-and-trade system in place that is as aggressive, if not more aggressive, than anybody else's out there," the Democratic presidential candidate said. "I was the first to call for a hundred-percent auction on the cap-and-trade system, which means that every unit of carbon or greenhouse gases that was emitted would be charged to the polluter. That will create a market in which whatever technologies are out there that are being presented, whatever power plants that are being built, that they would have to meet the rigors of that market and the ratcheted-down caps that are imposed every year.

"So if somebody wants to build a coal power plant, they can," Obama concluded. "It's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greeenhouse gas that's being emitted."

A press release from the Western Business Roundtable is calling on politicians of all stripes to denounce such a plan, and encouraging voters to hold those politicans accountable for whether they support the coal industry.

Below is the actual audio - click to listen.