Scott Pruitt Can't Stop the Death of Big Coal

[Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/scott-pruitt-cant-stop-the-death-of-big-coal-w508077?utm_source=rsnewsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=daily&utm_campaign=101017_16

I wrote my first story about the coal industry back in 2001, published a book called Big Coal in 2006 and have been following the industry ever since. And if there's one central truth that I've learned during that time, it's this: Virtually no coal industry leader, lobbyist or hack politician believes coal has a future in America. Everyone else knows it's a dead industry walking. The only question now is how much money they can extract, and how much damage they can do to our health, our economy and the climate, before Big Coal sinks into the tar pit of history.

I tell you this because this is the only way to really understand EPA administrator Scott Pruitt's announcement this week that he's going to gut President Obama's signature climate achievement, the Clean Power Plan. This is hardly a surprise. From the moment Pruitt was confirmed by the Senate earlier this year, it was a foregone conclusion that he would try to emasculate the Clean Power Plan. This was the whole point of his nomination – the thing he had been preparing for all his professional life. The only question was how soon he would do it, and what legal arguments he would make to justify it.

The Clean Power Plan was one of Obama's central accomplishments during his second term. The plan established state-by-state targets to cut the carbon pollution from power plants by 32 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. Despite what the coal industry says, these were hardly radical targets, and were simply a slow acceleration of decline that was going to happen anyway. But politically, they were hugely important. It was part of the run-up to Paris, a key part of the deal, making our pledge credible and allowing the nations of the world to come together to build a new framework to dramatically cut carbon pollution in the coming decades.

But now, of course, Trump (aided by Pruitt) has promised to pull the U.S. out of the Paris deal and is doing everything he can to convince Americans we can live in a 21st-century world with 19th-century power. It's a move pitched directly to Trump's base – to folks he's conned into believing that the past is the road to the future, and that burning more coal will fuel a kind of magic carpet that will take America back to a (fake) time when white men with muscles ruled the world. Trump may be our moron-in-chief, but he has understood better than anyone the potency of coal as a cultural symbol and talisman.

But while Trump's push for fossil fuels risks cooking the planet and stalling economic growth, the rollback of the Clean Power Plan may not be as consequential as it first appears.

For one thing, no amount of regulatory shenanigans will save the coal industry. The simple fact is, the cost curves for renewable power like solar and wind are declining fast, while coal is getting ever more expensive to mine and burn. It's highly unlikely anybody is going to build a new coal plant in America ever again. (Globally, it's a different story.) In addition, cheap natural gas has gutted the coal industry; why burn dirty coal when gas is cleaner, cheaper and easier to transport? The happy upside of all this is that, even without the Clean Power Plan, the U.S. is on track to meet the climate goals in the power plant sector set out by the Paris deal. Keeping the Clean Power Plan intact would certainly help accelerate that progress, and every ton of carbon dumped into the atmosphere pushes us deeper into climate chaos – but there's a reason why when I ask clean energy entrepreneurs about Pruitt's rollback, they often shrug. Coal is roadkill on the highway of progress.

[lordsummerisle]

1. Thanks for posting this, it needs more exposure n/t

[Binkie The Clown]

2. It's strange watching Republicans fighting AGAINST the working of the free market.

The free market doesn't want coal any more, and these so-called worshipers of the free market better wake up to that fact.