coalfight
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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Mike Bloomberg
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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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)
photo with edit 101117
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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Government move foils effort to reveal coal mine damage, environment groups say.
Extending the life of the Springvale coal mine will raise to "extreme" the risk of damage to upland swamps while locking in long-term pollution issues for Sydney's water catchment, according to evidence prepared for the Land and Environment Court.
Extending the life of the Springvale coal mine will raise to "extreme" the risk of damage to upland swamps while locking in long-term pollution issues for Sydney's water catchment, according to evidence prepared for the Land and Environment Court.
Whether the court will hear such evidence is in doubt, however, after the Berejiklian government revealed on Monday plans to weaken laws protecting water quality.
New legislation to be introduced to parliament on Tuesday will nullify a ruling by the Court of Appeal in August that the mine extension approval was invalid.
Opponents of the mine, which is located near Lithgow and is the sole source of fuel for the nearby Mount Piper power station, planned to call six experts later this month to challenge claims advanced by mine owner Centennial and plant owner EnergyAustralia to support the extension.
"We're concerned not only about the pollution impacts on Sydney's water quality, but also the permanent and significant damage to the upland swamps," said Andrew Cox, president at the 4Nature group that has led the legal challenge since the mine's extension was approved two years ago.
Energy Minister Don Harwin said the government needed to push through changes to the Environmental Planning and Assessment (EP&A;) Act to validate the mine expansion and keep Mount Piper supplying about 11 per cent of the state's electricity.
"We're doing what we need to do, and what's in the interest of NSW," Mr Harwin told reporters, arguing that waiting for the Land and Environment's resolution would risk sending electricity prices higher and heighten prospects of blackouts during this summer if Mount Piper ran out of coal.
A water treatment plant would be in place by mid-2019, so "you'll have no more discharge from the power station or the mine into the Upper Coxs Valley", he said. The Coxs is the second largest source of water for Sydney's main reservoir at Warragamba.
Mr Cox, though, said the government "has been deceived about the extent of the problem", with 4Nature planning to present proof existing coal stockpiles at the mine and power plant were sufficient to maintain generation through the summer and beyond.
4Nature also planned to highlight to the court findings earlier this year by the Independent Monitoring Panel that examined risks to upland swamps from subsidence caused by the underground mine.
The risk rating for the Gang Gang East Swamps above "has been increased to 'high', [and] it could be argued this should be raised to 'extreme'", the panel said.
The swamps are nationally significant and home to the threatened giant dragonfly and endangered Blue Mountains water skink that could be wiped out if the damage continued, Keith Muir, Director The Colong Foundation for Wilderness, said.
Mr Muir also noted the construction of a treatment plant left unanswered the question of who would pay for it once the mine closes.
"Who'll run it then?," he said."The mine water will still come out of the mine."
Centennial Coal, owner of the Springvale mine, welcomed the government's plan to rush through new legislation. It declined to comment on coal stocks, the impact on swamps and future water treatment.
Fairfax Media also sought comment on those issues from Mr Harwin, and from EnergyAustralia.
Adam Searle, Labor's energy spokesman, said the government had 10 weeks to sit down with the parties and seek a resolution, but had failed to act. Labor had to see the legislation before deciding its stance, he said.
The whole issue, though, "was a very good illustration of the state's over-reliance on coal-fired power" and the need to accelerate the introduction of renewable energy to diversify risks, he said.
Jeremy Buckingham, the Greens energy spokesman, said the government was "seeking to 'grandfather' all existing coal projects to allow them to keep polluting at their current levels, even if they expand or modify their mines".
"The legislation appears to go far beyond what was necessary to keep Mt Piper power station supplied with coal," he said. "They are essentially ripping up the important 'neutral or beneficial' test that is meant to protect our drinking water catchments."
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EPA clears way for more pollution.
If you want the Trump administration to favor coal plants, then that's what you are getting. Just don't call it a competitive market when dirty energy is allowed to pollute for free in order to compete with clean energy.
Who pays for the 52,000 deaths a year in the United States caused by small particulates and other air pollution released by coal-fired power plants?
Who pays for the 26 percent increase in chronic bronchitis associated with living near a coal plant? Or the myriad of other health problems caused by toxins released when burning coal?
When Environmental Protection Agency Administration Scott Pruitt talks about how the Clean Power Plan unfairly disadvantaged plants that burn coal, he never talks about who is paying for the human misery this industry causes.
For if the industry had to compensate all the people who suffer and die prematurely from the air pollution produced, coal plants would have gone out of business long ago. And that's before we begin talking about carbon dioxide, and how these plants contribute to climate change.
Anyone with a basic understanding of economics is rolling their eyes when Pruitt claims the Clean Power Plant was distorting energy markets. The EPA's fundamental mission is to make sure polluters pay the costs that they inflict on others, and that's all the Clean Power Plan did.
For over a hundred years, owners of coal plants have pumped noxious fumes loaded with tiny particulates into the air we breath. Those fumes and particulates ruin lungs and have caused a 26 percent increase in respiratory problems and associated deaths, according to hundreds of academic studies since 1970.
Reducing air pollution in urban areas was a major contributor to the 18 percent increase in life expectancy since the founding of the EPA, according to a 2013 Department of the Interior study. Further improvements could decrease premature death from bronchitis by 40 percent, according to a United Kingdom study.
Those longer, healthier lives have value not only to those individuals and their families, but also to our economy due to longer working lives and decreased health care costs. Pruitt and others in the Trump administration don't talk about those economic benefits when they complain that shutting down coal plants may lead to higher electricity prices.
If the Trump administration truly wanted the best, most balanced economic benefit for the American people, it would keep the Clean Power Plan. But because Trump campaigned against it, and promised to boost the job prospects of 63,000 workers in the coal business, Pruitt is going to dirty up the air.
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry has also been talking about our energy markets, claiming that tax incentives for wind and solar power distort them. Therefore he has recommended subsidies for nuclear and coal power plants.
Like Pruitt, Perry also fails to understand how markets are supposed to work, or the government's role in making them as fair as possible.
Most of America's coal-fired plants were built using taxpayer money back when the government set the rates. All of America's nuclear power plants were subsidized by the federal government. Just last week Perry provided a loan guarantee to the new Vogtle plant in Georgia.
Government's role in modern energy markets is to guarantee reliable electricity that accurately reflects the generation and pollution costs at the lowest price. Pruitt and Perry are tipping the scales toward coal plants by failing to capture their entire environmental costs.
If you want the Trump administration to favor coal plants, then that's what you are getting. Just don't call it a competitive market when dirty energy is allowed to pollute for free in order to compete with clean energy.
Also know that thousands of people will die from lung diseases every year as a result, and you will bear that cost in slower economic growth and higher health care bills. That's the very definition of a distorted market.
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