1. Coal industry bankruptcies prompt concern that taxpayers will end up paying for clean up
2. Peabody Energy, nation’s largest coal company, declares Chapter 11 bankruptcy
3. Fracking reduces carbon emissions
4. How fast is coal production in the U.S. declining?

The “Come and Take It” flag — which did such honorable service at Fort Morris in the Revolutionary War and at Goliad in the Texas Revolution — can surely be repurposed here. Instead of a cannon, it could feature a barrel smoker with an offset firebox.

Because they’re coming. They’re coming for our barbecue pits, our smokers and our backyard grills.

“As your neighbors fire up their barbecues this Independence Day, the most popular day in America to grill, they won’t just send the scent of tri-tip or grilled corn over the fence in your direction — they’ll also send smoke,” Mother Jones magazine reported last week. “Even the ‘cleanest’ gas grills emit pounds of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every hour they’re used. So how many emissions can we expect from dinner barbecues on the 4th?”

Don’t worry, the killjoys at Mother Jones are quite willing to do the math for you.

“Roughly 80 percent of American households own barbecues or smokers, according to the Hearth, Patio and Barbecue Association,” the magazine notes. “Let’s say all 92.5 million of them decide to grill on Saturday. A 2013 study by HPBA found that 61 percent of users opted for gas grills, 42 percent for charcoal and 10 percent for electric (some respondents had multiple grills).”

That works out to an estimated 882 million pounds of carbon, Mother Jones says.

“That’s roughly as many emissions as burning 2,145 railcars of coal, or running one coal-fired power plant for a month,” it sanctimoniously adds. It goes on to suggest — you guessed it — veggie burgers.

It’s not just the environmentalists coming after our grills; social justice warriors now say barbecue is evil, racist “cultural appropriation.”

The Guardian, for example, claims “Barbecue is an American tradition — of enslaved Africans and Native Americans.”

That newspaper explains, “Barbecue is a form of cultural power and is intensely political, with a culture of rules like no other American culinary tradition: sauce or no sauce; which kind of sauce; chopped or not chopped; whole animal or just ribs or shoulders. And, if America is about people creating new worlds based on rebellion against oppression and slavery, then barbecue is the ideal dish: it was made by enslaved Africans with inspiration and contributions from Native Americans struggling to maintain their independence.”

So Americans celebrating summer days and holidays with a grill, a spatula and friends are “taking” something not rightfully theirs, in this twisted worldview.

“Working over pits in the ground covered in green wood — much as in West Africa or Jamaica — it was enslaved men and their descendants, not the Bubbas of today’s Barbecue Pitmasters, that innovated and refined regional barbecue traditions,” The Guardian contends.

What’s the proper response to these self-righteous spoilsports? We could counter their carbon claims with science and stats. We could challenge their critical race theory orthodoxy by showing barbecue is a uniter, not a divider.

But this is Texas, and this topic requires a more gracious approach. We’ll simply invite them to a barbecue. Come on over, and write your name on a cup.

Welcome.