Under the incoming Trump Administration, it’s realistic to believe that relief could be on the way for decimated coal communities. Instead of directing his regulators to keep coal in the ground and its employees in the jobless lines, a Trump administration can encourage the nation’s engineers to make coal cleaner and keep coal miners employed.
Bowing to the EPA and transforming a state’s entire power supply costs billions of dollars. States that were preparing to submit compliance plans for EPA’s approval by late summer were already incurring substantial costs. Utility companies often don’t object, knowing they’ll eventually pass along these costs to ratepayers. But the high court realized that these costs are real. In their view, consumers should not have to pay when there’s “a fair prospect” that EPA’s plan is unlawful.
What began as a plan to euthanize old coal plants in the name of protecting against climate change has become a brazen plan to kill them all. Meanwhile, in autocratic China, where the communist party spurns free-market dogma and democracy, the government is offering bonuses to any coal power plant that increases efficiency.
Next week, Pope Francis will be visiting President Obama in the White House. There, on Sept. 23, expect to hear more pontificating about the urgency of global climate change. One thing these men have in common, aside from speaking piously and living in regal splendor, is their vocal opposition to coal. This summer Pope Francis, in remarks supporting the Vatican’s environmental encyclical, said carbon emissions from coal pose a danger to the spinning globe. He asked Catholics to slow or stop the use of coal and other fossil fuels.
