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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsMiners union president: 'Coal's not back. Nobody saved the coal industry.'
Source: CNN
By Kate Sullivan, CNN
Updated 2208 GMT (0608 HKT) September 5, 2019
(CNN) The president of United Mine Workers of America said Wednesday that the coal industry is not "back," despite President Donald Trump's claims.
Cecil Roberts said at an event in Washington that his message to Trump and others running for president in 2020 is: "Coal's not back. Nobody saved the coal industry." He said coal-fired plants are closing all over the country, calling it a "harsh reality."
Trump held a rally in West Virginia in August 2018 where he touted his administration's proposal to allow states to set their own emissions standards for coal-fueled power plants. He declared at the time, "We are back. The coal industry is back."
The Trump administration's Affordable Clean Energy rule could result in 1,400 more premature deaths by 2030, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, while the Obama-era plan it will replace would have avoided 3,600 premature deaths due to pollution from coal-fired power plants by that year. The Obama Clean Power Plan was set to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, which contribute to the climate crisis, by up to 32% compared with 2005 levels by the same year.
Roberts said Trump cutting back some of the Obama-era regulations that limited coal-fired power plant emissions "perhaps kept the coal industry ... in existence" but that plants are still closing "dramatically" and the market keeps shrinking. He said coal mining jobs will continue to be lost because of what he called bad public policy, and "eventually there will be no market here or only the strongest companies will survive."
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Read more: https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/05/politics/coal-miners-union-president-coals-not-back/index.html
Champp
(2,114 posts)Shockingly familiar story
calguy
(5,224 posts)Coal's not ever coming back. The best they can do is accept reality and train for a new line of work. But instead they believed that the con man would take us back to the past. Not working out too well for them.
RKP5637
(67,032 posts)msongs
(67,199 posts)FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)We're utterly shocked that none of that happened; it seemed so believable.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)We all have self-deceits, large and small, of things we'd like to be true. Some of them are harmless enough: This is the year my team finally wins the championship! Others are, shall we say, a bit less benign. Most people stop indulging those self-deceits when it's apparent they have become destructive or self-defeating. It's part of the process of growing up. As the Good Book says, "Then I became an adult, and put away childish things."
Face up to reality, Cecil. The industry that has provided your livelihood is winding down and soon will be no more. Listen to the candidates and the parties that tell you they want to prepare you for your next career, rather than the people who tell you sweet little lies that just leave you dead center on the bullseye for the million pound shithammer.
mahatmakanejeeves
(56,905 posts)OAITW r.2.0
(23,862 posts)Not ok for States to set tougher gas efficiency standards. Got it.