President Trump wants to make the U.S. coal industry “great again.”
The president has repeatedly said, “We are going to get those coal miners back to work.” He derides the Obama administration’s “job-killing Environmental Protection Agency” and “their war on America’s coal industry.”
The Trump administration celebrated the recent opening of Corsa Coal Corp.’s new Acosta mine — the first U.S. coal mine to debut in years. It will employ 70 workers. Corsa CEO George Dethiefsen told Fox News: “Coal is no longer a four-letter word.”
Trump’s critics highlight the Acosta mine’s meager job creation. They point out U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data that shows, on average, 92 jobs are created by the opening of one American supermarket.
The Trump administration has taken or contemplates several steps to revive the coal industry:
1. The administration lifted the Obama administration moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands.
2. The administration abandoned the U.S. Department of Interior’s stream protection rules, which sought to ensure clean water.
3. On March 28, President Trump signed an executive order that revokes Obama-era climate regulations.
4. President Trump has frequently promised to pull America out of a global pact to limit coal emissions.
Most coal experts do not believe that the Trump administration can reverse the industry’s decade-long decline. According to the U.S. Census Bureau’s “County Business Patterns,” the coal industry employed fewer than 76,500 people in 2014. That is below restaurant chain Arby’s workforce and a broad range of industries, including car washes, casinos, breweries and wineries.
Just looking at numbers, World War II represented the coal industries golden age when the United Mine Workers had 800,000 members.
What are some factors that hurt coal production?
• Economics: The increased amount of cheaper, cleaner U.S.-produced natural gas has dramatically cut the demand for coal, leading to decade-long declines. As a source of power for the energy industry, coal has dropped from more than 60 percent in the 1980s to 50 percent in the first part of the 21st Century to 32 percent at the moment.
Alternatively, natural gas fuels 33 percent of electricity generation. Although wind and solar power provide just 4 percent, those sources represented two-thirds of all new electricity-generating capacity.
• Coal mine conditions: In the heart of the coal industry — Appalachia — the easily accessible coal seams are gone. Coal operators now mine coal in more difficult, costly veins. By 2015, the added costs caused a decline of production volumes, some 40 percent below the average level of the previous five years.
• Going green: Many U.S. corporations desire zero- or low-carbon electricity. Cloud-based companies such as Amazon, Google and Apple prefer that “green electrons” power for their data centers.
President Trump extols economic nationalism, emphasizing that his administration puts America first. He prioritizes rebuilding our coal industry and our manufacturing base. Furthermore, he has tweeted repeatedly his disbelief that man-made actions have promoted climate change.
I, on the other hand, subscribe to American exceptionalism. I embrace our mission to address the challenges of global warming. We should have remorse that America is the biggest carbon polluter in history. According to the Clean Air Task Force, pollution from coal-fired plans kills about 7,500 Americans each year.
I would provide tax credits to corporations to refund the cost of manpower training. Retraining coal miners for 21st century jobs will alleviate their lives more effectively and cost efficiently than upgrading our current coal plants.
To keep our unemployment rate slightly above 4 percent, American industry is hiring some 150,000 new work force entrants monthly — double today’s total coal employment.
Originally published in the Sarasota Herald-Tribune
