Trump EPA head kills Obama-era clean coal program

Scott Pruitt

Hey, look! It’s a good thing that President Obama tried to do! Better undo it, even though it’ll only slightly benefit a tiny handful of people in a dying industry at the expense of destroying everyone else’s environment:

The head of the Environmental Protection Agency said Monday that he will sign a new rule overriding the Clean Power Plan, an Obama-era effort to limit carbon emissions from coal-fired power plants.

"The war on coal is over," EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt declared in the coal mining state of Kentucky. He said no federal agency "should ever use its authority" to "declare war on any sector of our economy."

For Pruitt, getting rid of the Clean Power Plan will mark the culmination of a long fight he began as the elected attorney general of Oklahoma. Pruitt was among about two dozen attorneys general who sued to stop President Barack Obama's push to limit carbon emissions, stymieing the limits from ever taking effect.

As you can expect, this is wrong-minded on every level:

Despite the rhetoric about saving coal, government statistics show that coal mines currently employ only about 52,000 workers nationally — a modest four per cent uptick since Trump became president. Those numbers are dwarfed by the jobs created by building such clean-power infrastructure as wind turbines and solar arrays.

Clean energy jobs cost less, pollute less, employ more people, are safer for their workers, generate more revenue, and are generally more energy-productive. So of course it’s the antiquated, hazardous, polluting jobs that help only a tiny sliver of the workforce that Trump and his EPA lapdog want to focus on. Because this administration has a pathological need to be on the wrong side of absolutely everything.

The “war on coal” never was, but the very real war on science progresses apace. And unlike the former, this will hurt everyone in the long run.