Donald Trump campaigned as a coal-friendly presidential candidate and his administration is trying to make good on his promises. From Politico two days ago:
Trump signed four executive orders designed to eliminate what he sees as obstacles to ramping up coal energy production in the United States, including by opening up public lands for coal leasing. He is also pushing for the fuel to be used to power the artificial intelligence data centers that are expected to be a major contributor to skyrocketing electricity demand in the coming years.One order would also instruct Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, who chairs the president’s Energy Dominance Council, to designate coal as a “mineral,” which would help boost production under Trump’s previous executive order aimed at rapidly approving permits for domestic mineral production. It also directs Interior and other relevant agencies to lift barriers from mining the resource to boost production, according to a fact sheet.
I teach a course on the politics of climate change and all of my students can tell you that this is a very bad idea. Coal is by far the worst of the fossil fuels that cause climate change as it burns much less efficiently than natural gas and oil. As the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) keeps saying, climate change poses a " grave and mounting threat to our wellbeing and a healthy planet." The IPCC has essentially issued a "code red for humanity."
Beyond its carbon intensity, coal is also "dirty" in the classic sense as it emits sulfur oxides and particulate pollution that is very bad for lungs. This estimate from a recent study by a team of scholars from George Mason University, the Harvard School of Public Health, and University of Texas at Austin is on the NIH website, but given the political climate could be vulnerable to a scrub:
The team estimated that between 1999 and 2020, 460,000 deaths would not have occurred in the absence of emission from the coal power plants.
That's merely in the US. Another study from University College London and Harvard found that "more than 8 million people around the globe die each year as a result of breathing in air containing particles from burning fuels like coal, petrol and diesel."
Coal is also bad for miners and DOGE has set about killing programs and firing people that work on black lung and mine safety. Trump is also famously anti-union and anti-worker.
In any case, the only way coal can compete in many markets is via subsidy as inexpensive natural gas has long been replacing coal in electricity generation. There was even a big drop in coal's share while Trump was president 2017-2020, but that just continued a long-term trend:
My students can also tell you that both solar and wind power are both now cheaper than coal and other fossil fuels around the world. This chart is from Popular Science:
Trump obviously digs coal, but his policies seem to be designed to make Mister Peabody wealthier, damn the consequences for the coal miner's daughter, her family, and all the rest of us.
As the Weaver's asked decades ago, which side are you on?
