Our Daily Planet: Trump’s Losing Record On Coal

Our Daily Planet contributor Amy Lupica dissects a recent NY Times article outlining the Trump administration's failed promise to resurrect the US coal industry.

Key quotes from the Our Daily Planet article:

"Trump promised to end the so-called “war on coal,” but now, three years and millions of dollars later, it is clearly a failure, Eric Lipton reports for The New York Times. The Trump administration sank an exorbitant amount of effort and funds to save coal mines and power plants, even intervening directly with some, but coal’s decline has continued to accelerate. When Trump made these promises on the 2016 campaign trail, he faced criticism from environmentalists and many more who said that investing in waning, non-renewable resources was a waste of time and money, and wouldn’t help workers or the economy. According to current data, they were right."

And,

"As the Times summed it up: “Since Mr. Trump was inaugurated, 145 coal-burning units at 75 power plants have been idled, eliminating 15 percent of the nation’s coal-generated capacity, enough to power about 30 million homes.”  In this failed effort to save the industry, Trump rolled back some of the most important environmental regulations on the books.  For example, Trump’s rollback of the Obama Era Clean Power Act didn’t benefit the coal industry the way he said it would.  At the same time, the Trump administration cut funding for many federal works and job training programs. Coal workers laid off from mines and plants, or those whose workplaces closed entirely were abandoned by the Administration, with few federal resources for finding new jobs."

You can read the entire article here: Trump’s Losing Record On Coal.