coalfight
The end of coal will haunt the Navajo.
The fossil fuel has been an environmental threat and economic necessity for Native American tribes in Arizona. What happens when it's gone?
Percy Deal, 67, lives in the same small, three-bedroom stone house he grew up in, situated in the remote Navajo village of Cactus Valley, Ariz. Like many homes in this part of the country, Deal’s lacks running water, so once a month, he drives his pickup truck 17 miles to a public pump, where he fills three 55-gallon drums to bring back home. On the living room wall, his father’s ceremonial feathers and sweat-stained cowboy hat hang over the couch next to a framed poem his father wrote, titled Endless. The second stanza reads: “Your heart and your roots tell a perpetual story of the love and harmony you and Mother Earth share.” His family has been on this land for 500 years.
Sixty miles north of Cactus Valley lies the Kayenta Mine, a 44,000-acre open pit whose sole customer is the Navajo Generating Station, 100 miles northwest in the town called Page. NGS is the country’s eighth-largest climate polluter, pumping out 16 million metric tons of carbon dioxide and hundreds of pounds of mercury and arsenic into the atmosphere each year. It’s also one of the area’s largest employers: Together with the mine, it’s responsible for 3,000 jobs, more than a third of them full-time.
In February, NGS’s controlling shareholder, a public utility called Salt River Project, announced that it would shut down the power plant beginning at the end of this year, another casualty of the surge in cheap natural gas. Without the power plant to buy its coal, the mine will be forced to shut down, as well. Navajo leaders railed and called on the Trump administration for help; Percy Deal and environmentalists celebrated. “Our leaders are not talking about the impact on the health of these people, respiratory diseases as a result of the industry,” Deal says.
In 2014, the independent Clean Air Task Force estimated that emissions from NGS contribute to 16 premature deaths, 25 heart attacks, 300 asthma attacks, and 15 asthma emergency room visits each year, and that shutting down the plant would save $127 million in annual health-care costs, according to the task force’s assessment. That same year, the Environmental Protection Agency reached an agreement with NGS to cut its emissions of nitrogen oxide—the main pollutant linked to lung ailments, not to mention thick haze in 11 nearby national parks, including the Grand Canyon—by 80 percent over the next 16 years before shutting down permanently in 2044. “Back then, the economics projected that it would still be viable,” SRP media relations manager Scott Harelson demurs. “The analysis of utilities and the price of natural gas moving forward show that the price will continue to remain low, and that’s what ultimately caused SRP to make their decision.”
For years, every economic indicator has pointed to the eventual death of coal as a power source—but with no public announcement before this year that SRP would consider shutting down the plant before its 2044 deadline, the tribe had little reason to think they needed contingency plans. “They dropped the whole thing on top of us,” says Navajo Nation chairman Russell Begaye. Each salary derived from NGS probably supports 20 to 30 people, he says—and at $141,500, on average, it is seven times greater than the median salary on the reservation. Already the poverty rate among the Navajo is three and a half times the national mean. “If we knew five years ago that they were going to be shutting down, we would have been ready.”
It’s unquestionable that closing NGS is the best possible outcome for the land the Navajo and their neighbors, the Hopi, have called home for more than 800 years. It’s also unquestionable that closing NGS presents an existential threat to both tribes. Once the work of winding down operations is said and done, “some will say, ‘I have no choice but to make a life off the reservation,’” says Hopi Chairman Herman Honanie. “That is very likely, and something that we, as parents and tribal leaders, especially for younger people, may have to really encourage.” After centuries of fighting against both men and laws, it’s market forces that have brought them to this breaking point. “I think we need to reach deep down inside ourselves and ask how we want to survive as a people,” he says.
“You don’t see a direct effect from pollution. And I live here,” says Marie Justice, a truck driver at the Kayenta mine and local union president, who lives down the street from Navajo Generating Station. “I’ve lived here a long time. My parents lived here their entire lives. They didn’t have any lung issues that you think would be from pollution. I just don’t think you can prove it.”
Justice grew up in nearby LeChee, a sparse village of 1,400, where her family raised sheep. They lived in a hogan, a traditional Navajo mud-and-wood structure, before building a single-story cinder-block ranch in the early 1960s. The home didn’t have running water and was first wired with electricity—through a program sponsored by NGS—in 2015. Thirty members of her extended family have been employed at either NGS or Kayenta, she says. She met her husband, Bill, a retired supervisor, at the mine, and her son now works at the power plant.
Talk with nearly anyone around the plant or the mine, and you’ll hear stories of families depending on them for far more than just their jobs. Kayenta operates the water pump Deal goes to for water, and in the winter, the mine also provides free coal at a public load-out station to all native residents. “It burns long and hot—much better than wood,” says Dwayne Blackrock, who lives on the reservation and whose father worked at the mine for 21 years. “Everyone out here relies on the mine. When they are gone, I am not sure what some people are going to do.” This dependence is due in no small part to actions taken by the federal government.
The Navajo and the Hopi may be allies in the fight to keep NGS operational, but they have a fraught history of land disputes dating back to the 19th century. In 1966, as a means of forcing the tribes to negotiate, the federal government enacted the Bennett Freeze, which prohibited development on 1.5 million acres of contested land. For the 35 years the Bennett Freeze was in effect, the tribes were prohibited from undertaking infrastructure improvements such as laying gas or water lines and paving roads—worse, residents were unable to perform necessary maintenance such as re-roofing a house. By 2001, when the freeze was finally lifted, more than 75 percent of homes in the disputed territory had become uninhabitable. Today an estimated 60 percent of homes in the area still don’t have electricity or phones, and one in three has incomplete indoor plumbing.
The federal government has been more than willing to step in and legislate in the past, but in this case, it has been unwilling to assist the tribes. In May, the Hopi and Navajo sent a joint letter to Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke asking the department to intervene on their behalf—a reasonable expectation, they thought, given the administration’s bellicose pro-coal rhetoric. “We have not received any commitment from them,” says Begaye, the Navajo chairman. “The government is not living up to its promises when it comes to supporting coal.” The Department of the Interior did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
On Oct. 9, however, EPA chief Scott Pruitt announced the Trump administration’s intention to roll back the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which curbs emissions from coal power plants such as NGS. “The war on coal is over,” Pruitt said. But it may be too little too late for the Navajo’s economic breadwinner.
While Salt River Project owns the largest share of NGS, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, a division of the Department of Interior, also has a stake that entitles it to extract power for the Central Arizona Project, which pumps water from the Colorado River to parts of central and southern Arizona. (Others, including Arizona Public Service Company, NV Energy, and Tucson Electric Power, are also minority shareholders.)
David Palumbo, deputy commissioner of operations at the Bureau of Reclamation, told Bloomberg News it can’t just take over. “We don’t believe we have the current congressional authority to assume complete ownership of the plant,” he says. “Our authority lies in bringing power to CAP.” Helping SRP subsidize the price of coal to rates competitive with natural gas—a cost of $100 million per year—is also not an option. “We do not currently have that as part of our budget,” says Palumbo. “The authority to subsidize does not exist.” The federal government’s Indian trust responsibility, which obliges the U.S. to assist Native American tribes with economic development, doesn’t apply to jobs lost at NGS and the mine, Palumbo says, although he adds that the department will be accelerating efforts related to infrastructure development, including bringing broadband, electricity, and water to rural communities, after the closures.
This is Percy Deal’s main priority. “There is only one thing more powerful than money. That’s water,” he says. “The mine closing down is going to be a blessing to us. It’s going to be the beginning of a new era for us towards recovery, simply because we are going to get access to the water. Water is life. Without water, everything is at a standstill out here.” The plant uses more than 30,000 acre-feet per year for its cooling system, while the mine draws an additional 1,200 acre-feet per year, mainly for dust control. There’s no evidence to suggest that either has prevented water from reaching Deal’s hom. However, the water level of the Little Colorado River Plateau, which provides water to the northern region of the Navajo reservation, has dropped by 11.2 feet in the past 20 years.
SRP plans to pay the Navajo Nation $110 million over a period of 35 years to monitor the plant’s long-term environmental impact—less than 3 percent of what it would have paid the tribe for use of the land if the plant had remained operational. The tribe will also retain ownership of water pumps in Lake Powell, the direct water source for the plant’s cooling systems, as well as the railroad used to ship coal from the mine to the plant. To take those items off SRP’s hands, it will pay the Navajo an additional $18 million.
The Navajo Nation recently allocated $21 million to serve water to 180 new homes, including Deal’s. But Begaye admits that reclaiming water rights won’t be easy. What the plant uses is owned by the state of Arizona—part of the 1922 Colorado River Compact, which divided water rights among seven states, not including any Native territories. “We still have to get permission from the state of Arizona to get us that water, which we know is something we will not get,” Begaye says. “We will negotiate as hard as we can with the state to bring that water back to our people.”
On the Crow Indian Reservation in Montana, the Absaloka coal mine accounts for 50 percent of the tribe’s nonfederal income. The mine opened in 1974 and employs 170 people, but revenue from the operation has dwindled in recent years because of coal’s decline, causing the tribal government to lay off 1,000 of its 1,300 employees. “This is the worst I’ve ever seen it—ever,” Crow Chief Executive Officer Paul Little Light told the New York Times in April, referring to poverty on the reservation.
“Many tribal economies are insufficiently diversified,” says Joe Kalt, co-director of the Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development at Harvard University. “With coal-reliant tribes like the Crow or the Navajo, you are obviously seeing consequences of not being diversified more directly. Part of the problem at NGS, too, is just the problem of coal in general. But this being part of the first generation of economic development, back in the ’60s, they put a lot of eggs in that single basket.”
SRP signed a 50-year lease with the Navajo in 1969; Peabody Energy Corp. signed agreements with both the Navajo and the Hopi in 1966 (the same year the Bennett Freeze was enacted). Together, the two companies pay the Navajo $35 million per year, which amounts to 30 percent of the tribe’s income. Peabody pays the Hopi $13 million annually—a full 85 percent of the tribe's yearly revenue. “The plant and mine hold up the economy of an entire region,” Begaye says, adding that he’s considering reducing hours and cutting retirement packages for Navajo government employees. “We are facing a crisis here.”
Begaye says the Navajo Nation will continue to operate the water station, and no-cost coal will still be available for heating, but residents will have to venture out to find it themselves. SRP offered to find jobs for NGS employees at its other facilities in Arizona, which include a coal power plant 260 miles from NGS and several gas plants and corporate buildings in the Phoenix metropolitan area, four hours away by car. Peabody, too, will offer priority consideration to Kayenta employees for jobs at other sites in the U.S. “Peabody believes NGS is an important engine for Arizona’s economy and growth and should continue operating well into the future,” the company told Bloomberg News. Peabody has exclusive rights to the 21 billion tons of coal in the area, according to the U.S. Geological Survey, worth upward of $100 billion. If NGS shuts down, that revenue remains in the ground.
SRP’s position is that the factors contributing to NGS’s closure were hardly unique or secret. “We have regular communications with the Navajo Nation. The subject of costs of other resources are part of those conversations,” says Harelson. “Natural gas prices dropping was not a mystery to anyone, including the Navajo Nation. But when was the tipping point for us? It’s difficult to say.”
The plant’s 50-year lease ends in 2019; the original agreement included an option to extend until 2044, which SRP chose not to exercise. A necessary two-year wind-down period explains its haste to close. In July, the Navajo and the Hopi successfully negotiated a two-year lease extension with SRP, which would allow the plant—and, by extension, the Kayenta mine—to remain operational through 2019. But because the federal government is technically a trustee of the land, it has to certify the agreement before the deal can go through. It has until Dec. 1 to do so. In the unlikely event it rejects the lease extension, the plant and mine will begin shutting down soon after Christmas. On Oct. 2, however, Peabody announced that potential investors have expressed interest in pursuing ownership of NGS, which may extend the life of the facilities.
Every morning for the past 40 years, Gerald Clitso, 59, has made the same drive from his home in the town of Kayenta to the mine, where he’s a machine operator. He has two grown children, both of whom he was able to put through college off the reservation. “I decided to work in the mine because of my family—to support them and give them a good life,” he says. “But now that opportunity is being taken away from others. There’s nothing else up here for jobs—nothing.”
Unlike some of his co-workers, Clitso doesn’t deny the environmental impact of the mine. “It’s a choice we’ve had to make,” Clitso says. “What am I supposed to do? Keep living in poverty and raise my kids in poverty? There will never be a day that I regret to say that I worked at the mine.”
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Secretary Zinke, it's time to call it quits.
Working to undermine the agency you were charged with leading is not just a betrayal of those who work there; it is a betrayal of the Americans the agency serves.
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Joel Clement: Secretary Ryan Zinke has shown contempt for the Department of Interior's mission and its employees
His priorities lie with President Trump and special interests, not the American people he should be working for, writes Clement
Joel Clement is an independent science, policy and climate change expert and former civil servant. He was a climate change policy adviser at the US Department of the Interior until July 2017, when he became a federal whistleblower, accusing the Trump administration of retaliating against him for his climate change work. In September 2017, he received the Joe A. Callaway Award for Civic Courage. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.
(CNN)Secretary Ryan Zinke, last week I turned in my US Department of the Interior credentials and reluctantly walked away from public service. Today, I call on you to do the same and resign as secretary of the Interior.
Since you were sworn in on March 1, you have demonstrated contempt for the agency's mission and its devoted employees. As I described in my resignation letter, I quit my position because of your spectacularly poor leadership, reckless waste of taxpayer dollars and disregard for the dangers of climate change -- all of which are putting American well-being and the economy at risk.
You and your deputy secretary, David Bernhardt, a former oil and gas lobbyist, have no strategic vision of your own and are dedicated to President Donald Trump's special interests first, Americans last model. As Trump flunkies, you are eliminating anything the previous administration touched, you are marginalizing scientists and experts, and you are blithely disabling the agency so special interests can move in and snatch public lands out of the public's hands.
DOI has a unique set of responsibilities in the federal family, and your resume of failure impacts every single facet of the DOI mission. You have shown contempt for the conservation mission by conducting a sloppy review of our treasured national monuments to score political points. Your review was of an arbitrary list of monuments and your recommendations to the President, captured in an error-filled memorandum to the White House, were seemingly based on an unclear and inconsistent set of criteria. And you conducted this review while hypocritically recommending a new national monument for Montana, where you hope to advance your political career.
Astonishingly, you're also moving to undercut the Western sage grouse conservation plans that were so carefully developed by bipartisan federal, state and local partners across the West. Even Republican Gov. Matt Mead from Wyoming has expressed public concern over what you are trying to do. Unlike you, those partners understand that if that bird lands on the endangered list, Western economies will pay the price. For years, collaborators in the West have been working hard to prevent a conflict in which the sage grouse and its habitat require stringent protections that can impact local economies.
Trump is the swamp monster
You have also been reckless with DOI's resource leasing mission. You eliminated a rule that helped prevent oil, gas and coal companies from cheating American taxpayers on royalty payments. You canceled a moratorium on a failed coal leasing program that is also cheating taxpayers. And you had the audacity to cancel a study into the health risks of people living near mountaintop-removal coal mines after rescinding a rule that would have protected their health. If not for the intervention of a US District Court, you also would have suspended a methane rule that will save hundreds of millions of dollars, provide energy for American homes and restrict harmful methane emissions.
In addition to your conservation and resource extraction failures, you have left the imperiled Alaska Native villages of the Arctic to fend for themselves and you reneged on your day one promise to prioritize American Indian sovereignty by curtailing programs meant to serve American Indians and Alaska Natives.
Your failures will be amplified by climate change, and it's not only the Alaska Native villages that are on the front lines now. Worried families sit in the path of devastating hurricanes, businesses in coastal communities are already experiencing frequent and severe flooding, fishermen along our coasts are pulling up empty nets due to warming seas, farming communities are being hit by floods of biblical proportions and medical professionals are scrambling to understand new disease vectors. Climate change is real and has consequences for Americans, our natural and cultural heritage, and our economy.
If you and President Trump continue to muzzle experts in science, health and other fields while handing over the keys to special interests, these consequences will be far more harmful. Harvey, Irma and Maria were monster storms made worse by climate change, but their damage was amplified exponentially by a lack of urban resilience, deregulation on steroids and an ongoing disregard for environmental justice. These problems will only grow worse if special interests maintain their grip on the agencies that are supposed to be looking out for Americans
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Working to undermine the agency you were charged with leading is not just a betrayal of those who work there; it is a betrayal of the Americans the agency serves. Americans deserve a secretary who will protect America's natural resources rather than pander to corporate interests; they deserve a secretary who will rise to new challenges rather than rebuke civil servants; they deserve a secretary who will be frugal with the agency's limited resources rather than fly private jets on at least three occasions and then hold fundraisers and photo shoots (a story you have called "a little BS"); they deserve a secretary who will foster American well-being rather than flatter his own political ambitions.
Secretary Zinke, you should resign effective immediately.
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Bloomberg's charity donates $64 million to 'war on coal.'
Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s charity gave another $64 million to a campaign that aims to slash the number of U.S. coal-fired plants by two thirds by 2020, he said on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg’s charity gave another $64 million to a campaign that aims to slash the number of U.S. coal-fired plants by two thirds by 2020, he said on Wednesday.
Bloomberg Philanthropies made the donation to the Beyond Coal campaign run by non-profit Sierra Club, and other organizations fighting the burning of coal. Including this latest donation, the charity has given $110 million to Beyond Coal since 2011.
The pledge was made a day after President Donald Trump’s environmental regulator announced a move to scrap former president Barack Obama’s Clean Power Plan that would have reduced carbon emissions from coal plants.
The Trump administration labeled the Clean Power Plan part of a “war on coal” by Obama.
But Bloomberg said that since the plan has been tied up by the courts and never came into effect, the real threat to coal comes from competing power sources, such as cheap natural gas, solar, and wind power, as well as communities, local governments and companies concerned about public health.
“These are the groups that are fighting the war on coal and it’s happening all across America and they are winning,” Bloomberg said at an event at the Sierra Club in Washington.
Since 2011 nearly half of the country’s coal-fired power plants, or nearly 260 plants, have been closed.
Beyond Coal wants to push communities to fight coal plants which emit carbon and particulates blamed for lung and heart problems. It aims to increase closures to some two-thirds of the U.S. coal fleet by 2020.
While domestic coal use is under pressure, coal exports have risen this year amid high global demand. The Energy Information Administration, the independent statistics arm of the Department of Energy, said on Wednesday that U.S. coal exports were up 62 percent from January to July, compared to the same period in 2016.
But U.S. coal-fired power plant closures have continued apace since Trump came to office in January. Last week, Luminant, a subsidiary of Vistra Energy Corp, said it would shut its Monticello plant in Texas next year, joining about 10 other plants that have announced their closure since Trump came to office.
Reporting by Timothy Gardner, Editing by Rosalba O'Brien
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Trump’s pro-coal agenda is a blow for clean air efforts at Texas' Big Bend park.
For decades Big Bend's stunning vistas have been compromised by poor air quality that Texas, working with the federal Environmental Protection Agency, is supposed to address.
Big Bend national park is Texas at its most cinematic, with soaring, jagged forest peaks looming over vast desert lowlands, at once haughty and humble, prickly and pretty. It is also among the most remote places in the state.
Even from Alpine, the town of 6,000 that is the main gateway to the park, it is more than an hour’s drive to one of the entrances.
So far from anywhere, it might seem an unlikely location to be scarred by air pollution. Yet for decades its stunning vistas have been compromised by poor air quality that Texas, working with the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), is supposed to address.
But environmental advocates fear that the Trump administration’s pro-coal agenda will derail the prospects of improvement, at least in the short term. Tuesday’s announcement that the EPA plans to abandon the 2015 Clean Power Plan to reduce carbon emissions came less than two weeks after the agency revealed a revised plan to combat regional haze in Texas and Oklahoma that critics say will do little to cut pollution.
Chrissy Mann, Austin-based senior campaign representative with the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign, said: “Taken in combination with the Clean Power Plan, what we’re seeing is an attempt from this administration and this EPA to dig in their pockets and find whatever kind of tricks they think are going to stick to provide a lifeline to the coal industry across the country and here in Texas. It’s disappointing.”
Texas is part of a multi-state coalition that sued to stop the Clean Power Plan, which was placed on hold by the US supreme court last year.
Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement: “It’s gratifying that our lawsuit against Obama-era federal overreach was a catalyst for repeal of the plan. We look forward to working with the administration to craft a new strategy that will protect the environment without hurting jobs and the economy.”
A back-and-forth between the EPA and Texas over regional haze has been in motion since 1999, when the agency launched a concerted effort to deal with the problem, bidding to improve the air quality in Big Bend national park, Guadalupe Mountains national park and in Oklahoma, the home state of the EPA administrator, Scott Pruitt.
In 2009, the state enforcer, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, issued a plan that would restore “natural visibility” to Big Bend by the year 2155. That was rejected as inadequate by the EPA in 2014.
The EPA wanted Texas to cut 230,000 tons of sulphur dioxide emissions per year to improve visibility and reduce the risk of worsening respiratory diseases and heart disease and damaging soil, water, fish and wildlife.
Two years later, finding “Texas relied on an analysis that obscured the benefits of potentially cost-effective controls”, the EPA replaced parts of Texas’s emissions plan, calling for plant upgrades and a target of “natural visibility” by 2064.
Texas sued the agency and won a stay of implementation in a federal appeals court. The state argued that it is making reasonable progress and, along with industry representatives, claimed that enacting the structural improvements – notably fitting some electricity plants with sulphur dioxide scrubbers – would cost $2bn and be a backdoor way of forcing the closure of coal-fired power plants. That, it said, might put the state at risk of power shortages and increased prices for consumers.
Last December, in the sunset days of the Obama administration, the EPA proposed another scheme that would also have required older plants to upgrade their technology.
But in August this year, Pruitt’s EPA asked a federal court for more time – until the end of 2018 – to come up with a way forward. When the judge refused, on 29 September the EPA unveiled a path that is much more palatable for Texas and the power companies: one that wouldn’t require retrofitting, instead claiming to achieve comparable results with an intrastate cap-and-trade programme. That would give polluters allowances within an overall emissions budget that can be used or traded in a marketplace.
Such programmes can be effective, but Mann, of the Sierra Club, contends that the cap is too high so will not provide any incentive for meaningful reductions. “It’s not very aggressive. In other words, the amount of pollution that coal plants in Texas are allowed to produce is actually higher than our emissions from last year from the same coal plants, taken all together,” Mann said.
The National Park Service and EPA carried out a study in 1999 to understand what causes haze in Big Bend, which is worse in the warmer months. It found that sulphate particles formed from sulphur dioxide sources such as coal power plants and refineries were a key cause.
Researchers discovered that substantial amounts of sulphate particulates came not only from Texas and Mexico, but the distant eastern US. When air flows from the east, production in America’s coal heartlands has an effect on Big Bend’s scenery.
Even if Trump’s efforts to boost coal collide with economic reality and market forces spur more growth in renewable energy, any delays in transitioning to cleaner energy and reduced emissions prolong the haze problem.
Air quality has not improved and ozone has seen a slight deterioration over the past decade, according to Jeffery Bennett, physical sciences program coordinator at the park. “Nitrogen deposition has not changed and remains a significant concern. Desert landscapes are especially sensitive to nitrogen,” he wrote in an email in July.
“Mercury is an emerging concern,” he added, based on levels found in fish; it is unclear whether this is because of atmospheric deposition or the legacy of nearby abandoned mercury mines.
The park faces Mexico and since Donald Trump entered the White House it has attracted attention as a particularly unsuitable place to build a wall.
Still, in a few years, tourists might find that while Trump might have failed to wall off the Big Bend from Mexico, the view is blocked all the same. “If you’re standing here in Panther Junction and not able to see the Sierra del Carmen that’s 20 miles away, because of the sulphates and other pollutions that blew in, you’re missing a big part of why this became a park,” Jennette Jurado, the park’s public information officer, said earlier this year at the main visitor centre.
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Mr. Trump nails shut the coffin on climate relief.
Ending goals to cut emissions from coal-fired power plants will be the most serious blow to President Obama’s legacy on global warming.
The Trump administration formally proposed on Tuesday to roll back yet another of President Barack Obama’s efforts to position the United States as a global leader in the fight against climate change. The move, though widely anticipated, was deeply disheartening. In March Mr. Trump ordered Scott Pruitt, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, to repeal the Clean Power Plan, which was aimed at reducing carbon dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants. Mr. Pruitt, a climate denier closely tied to the fossil fuel industry, was only too happy to oblige — boasting to an audience of Kentucky coal miners on Monday that the plan was dead and that “the war on coal is over.”
All this is infuriating on several levels.
It repeated the same false narrative that congressional Republicans have been peddling for years and that Mr. Trump’s minions are peddling now — that environmental regulations are job killers, that restraining greenhouse gas emissions will damage the economy, that the way forward lies in digging more coal and punching more holes in the ground in the search for oil.
It reaffirmed the administration’s blind loyalty to dirtier energy sources, ignoring the pleas of corporate leaders who know that economic momentum and new investment lie with cleaner sources of energy, and fear that without innovation their costs will rise and their competitive edge over foreign countries will be lost.
It repudiated the rock-solid scientific consensus that without swift action the consequences of climate change — widespread species extinction, more devastating droughts, more Harveys and Irmas and wildfires like those now raging in Northern California — will become more likely.
It offered, on a human level, more empty promises to the frightened miners who keep showing up to hear Mr. Pruitt say that coal is coming back, when any comeback is unlikely not because of regulation but because of powerful market forces favoring natural gas and renewables.
And it gave us another reminder that Mr. Trump is hellbent on abdicating the leadership on climate change Mr. Obama worked so hard to achieve — first with a suite of regulatory measures and then by making an emissions-reduction pledge at the 2015 Paris climate summit meeting strong enough to induce 194 other nations to sign on to what had all the makings of a historic global agreement.
Under that agreement, nations submitted voluntary pledges to curb their emissions in the near term and to ratchet up their efforts in the future; the idea was to limit the rise in global warming to well below two degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. To that end, Mr. Obama promised that the United States, which accounts for one-fifth of the world’s emissions, would lower its emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. The administration later published a report sketching out various technological pathways to cutting emissions 80 percent or more by 2050.
Then along came Mr. Trump, who in March ordered the destruction or delay of nearly every building block that supported Mr. Obama’s pledge — rules aimed at increasing fuel efficiency of cars and trucks; rules aimed at limiting emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from oil and gas wells; rules aimed at increasing the energy efficiency of appliances; and most important of all, the Clean Power Plan. Not long afterward, Mr. Trump commanded his secretary of the interior, Ryan Zinke, to reverse Mr. Obama’s efforts to limit oil and gas exploration in Arctic waters and on sensitive federal lands, a task to which Mr. Zinke has fallen with great enthusiasm and which, if successful, will further increase the carbon emissions the world is trying to limit.
Given all these orders, Mr. Trump’s decision in June to withdraw from the Paris agreement, though deeply demoralizing to the entire world, seemed in practical terms almost superfluous.
Some experts say that all is not lost, that it is still possible for the United States to hit its Paris targets. Aggressive state and local policies as well as market forces and technological improvements have already reduced emissions about 12 percent below 2005 levels. These include a huge switch to gas from coal, which once supplied more than half the country’s electricity and now supplies only a third; the steadily dropping cost of wind and solar energy; and more efficient vehicles, buildings and appliances. Further progress along these lines, without any federal help, could yield a total emissions reduction of 15 to 19 percent. One particularly bright note is that many states, including California and New York, are already moving ahead of the targets set by the Clean Power Plan.
Those same experts, however, also concede that federal help is crucial, both in limiting emissions from existing sources and in promoting alternative fuels and new technologies. This administration shows no interest in either. Mr. Pruitt, in fact, used the occasion of his triumphant dismissal of the Clean Power Plan to say he would love to get rid of the federal subsidies that have been and remain vital to the development of wind and solar power, while saying nary a word about the lavish subsidies for the oil industry.
Like some of Mr. Trump’s other rollbacks, the power plant decision will be fought in court by some states and by environmental groups. The E.P.A. is required by law to regulate carbon dioxide emissions in some fashion, but so far Mr. Pruitt has not proposed a substitute plan. The betting is that if he does, it won’t amount to much, surely not the closing of any coal-fired plants. Meanwhile, Mr. Obama’s measures lie in tatters, along with Mr. Trump’s claims to leadership.
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A dirty power plan.
Many states plan to maintain their own clean-air regulations. The N.C. legislature, unfortunately, won’t allow that here.
Our Opinion: A dirty power plan
6 hrs ago (0)
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AP photo
To President Donald Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency should be a job creator, not a job killer.
But that idea was nowhere in the mind of President Richard Nixon, who asked Congress to create the EPA.
“Clean air, clean water, open spaces — these should once again be the birthright of every American,” he said in his 1970 State of the Union address.
Today, there’s a different aspiration governing the EPA. It’s to bring back coal as the leading energy resource in the country. The agency’s name could be changed to CPA for Coal Protection Agency.
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, who repeatedly sued the agency when he was attorney general in Oklahoma, signed a measure Tuesday seeking to repeal the Clean Power Plan. The action follows an executive order by the president setting a “national policy in favor of energy independence, economic growth, and the rule of law,” the EPA said in a news release.
Of course, that has nothing to do with the agency’s former mission of protecting the environment. Its purpose now is to clear obstacles from Trump’s campaign promise to bring back coal jobs. To that end, it’s actually intervening in the energy marketplace to pick winners and losers — an approach usually derided by conservatives.
The marketplace has decided that coal’s hey-day is over. Trump and his political supporters blame former President Barack Obama for killing the coal industry, but coal jobs were fast vanishing before Obama took office. The trend continued in recent years because of a superior competitor — cheaper, cleaner and more abundant natural gas. From 2008 to 2016, 17 percent of U.S. coal-energy capacity retired, and that trend will continue as companies such as Duke Energy close inefficient coal plants or convert them to natural gas, and further add renewable resources to their portfolios.
Coal isn’t only more expensive than natural gas, it leaves high residual costs. Duke has proposed an average 13.6 percent rate hike, about half of which is related to coal-ash storage.
“A typical residential family actually generates more than 150 pounds of coal ash every year from the electricity that they consume,” Duke spokesman Jeff Brooks said in August. Wow. How much more do we want?
A coal-ash spill into the Dan River in 2014 made national headlines, and seepage from storage basins continues to be a concern for nearby residents. And, obviously, burning coal adds heavily to air pollution, posing health risks and contributing to greenhouse gases responsible for global warming, according to climate scientists.
The Trump administration, however, rejects this science. The president has called climate change “a Chinese hoax.” Pruitt discounts a human impact on climate. His recently nominated deputy, Andrew Wheeler, was a top aide to Sen. James Inhofe, who once carried a snowball into the Senate chamber to “prove” the Earth isn’t warming. More recently, Wheeler has worked for Murray Energy, a coal company.
These are the people now entrusted with environmental protection. Yet, they admit that’s not their priority.
But even Robert Murray, head of Murray Energy, warned Trump about his coal jobs promise. “I suggested that he temper his expectations. Those are my exact words,” Murray told The Guardian in March. “He can’t bring them back.”
All Trump can do, then, is give the green light for coal plants to emit more pollutants into the air for as long as they’re still in operation, with disregard for environmental consequences or the health effects on people with asthma or other medical conditions.
Many states won’t accept that and plan to maintain their own clean-air regulations. The N.C. legislature, unfortunately, won’t allow that here. But environmental groups, joined by progressive states, can ask the courts to make the EPA do the job President Nixon intended and which it has done well — until now.
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'Shocking' spike in Hunter Valley's coal-linked air pollution fails to prompt action.
Air pollution from the Hunter Valley coal mines gets so bad for Wendy Wales on occasion that she has called neighbours warning them of a bushfire, mistaking the dust for smoke.
'Shocking' spike in Hunter Valley's coal-linked air pollution fails to prompt action
Peter Hannam
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Air pollution from the Hunter Valley coal mines gets so bad for Wendy Wales on occasion that she has called neighbours warning them of a bushfire, mistaking the dust for smoke.
Wednesday was another day of heavy haze in her region as the high school science teacher drove into the upper Hunter town of Muswellbrook where she lectures.
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The Wambo open cut mine in the Hunter Valley. Photo: Anita Jones
"It looked like the whole place had been blown up like a bomb," Ms Wales said. "It was really shocking."
Pollution monitors in the area earlier picked up readings of 103.4 PM10 – particulates of 10 micrometres or less in diameter – at midnight at Warkworth near some large open-cut coal mines.
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The Hunter Valley has many open cut coal mines that residents say should be more tightly regulated. Photo: Dean Osland
Residents received an air quality alert from the NSW Environment Protection Authority at 5am, warning PM10 levels had exceeded the national air quality standard of 50 PM10 per cubic metre averaged over 24 hours.
According to James Whelan, spokesman for Environmental Justice Australia, the EPA has issued about 190 such alerts in the Hunter this year. Last month's tally of 72 of the most he had seen in the five years he had been tracking the pollution readings.
"September was extraordinary," Mr Whelan said, adding the jump does not appear to have prompted any steps by the EPA to curtail mine production or seek other remedial step. "It wouldn't make any difference if there were no alerts, or there were 100 a month."
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Health impacts
PM10 particulates affects health at any level, with the material absorbed into the blood or lungs. Coal mining is responsible for about 90 per cent.
Coal and Allied's Mount Thorley-Warkworth mine reported emitting 9.2 million kilograms of PM10 in their most recent National Pollution Inventory report, up 12 per cent on the previous year, while nearby Bulga mine emitted more than 5 million kilograms of PM10, up 32 per cent, Lock The Gate said.
Stockton in the Lower Hunter had the worst pollution with its daily average PM10 concentrations exceeding the national standard 36 times so far this year.
Camberwell, Mt Thorley, Singleton NW and Maison Dieu recorded the most exceedances in the Upper Hunter, accounting for 65 of the region's 80 breaches.
Cumulative effects
Fairfax Media asked the EPA whether the September alerts were a monthly record and what steps it had taken to press mines to alter operations.
"The EPA has also required all coal mines to implement best management practice measures to minimise dust emissions via the Dust Stop program," a spokeswoman said.
Mr Whelan said the government's own 2011 commissioned report into best practice stated emissions from material dumping could be minimised by ceasing or modifying activities on dry windy days – weather most of NSW including the Hunter has frequently endured in recent months. Water sprays were another option.
If miners and the EPA had been taking steps, "they were not enough to bring pollution levels down below the [national] standard", he said.
The EJA and Lock the Gate say it is time EPA and NSW's Department of Planning acted on long-overdue recommendations – accepted five years ago – to address and prevent cumulative impacts of open-cut coal mining on air quality.
They say the agencies should tackle the effects of adding more mines when they assess the United Wambo super pit coal and the expansion of the Hunter Valley Operations near Singleton.
"Why is the government still considering more open-cut pits in the worst affected area when they still haven't set basic thresholds to protect people from cumulative health damage?" Georgina Woods, Lock the Gate spokeswoman, said. "There has to be a limit, and we've reached it."
The Department of Planning is currently assessing United Wambo's development application and has commissioned an independent review of its Air Quality Impact Assessment that will include the cumulative mining impacts in the area, a spokesman said.
'Megamine'
Jeremy Buckingham, NSW Greens resources spokesman said the government was failing to account for mining's cumulative impacts from particulate pollution to greenhouse gas emissions, habitat destruction or water.
"The scale of modern open-cut mining turns the surrounding landscape into an industrial area, which is incompatible with sustainable agriculture and healthy communities," he said.
For Ms Wales, efforts to curb develop further down the valley are likely to bring little benefit to her area near Aberdeen where the nearby Mount Pleasant mine is rapidly expanding.
"It's just opening up – it's going gangbusters," she said. "It's a megamine."
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