"I'm bringing back coal!" No, you ain't.
Oct 17, 2020 3:32:46 GMT
elaine, michellegb, and 6 more like this
Post by Deleted on Oct 17, 2020 3:32:46 GMT
"“We’re going to put our miners back to work,” Mr. Trump promised soon after taking office.
He didn’t.
Despite Mr. Trump’s stocking his administration with coal-industry executives and lobbyists, taking big donations from the industry, rolling back environmental regulations and intervening directly in cases like the Arizona power plant and mine, coal’s decline has only accelerated in recent years....
Mr. Pruitt came from Oklahoma, where he had gained a national reputation while attorney general for defending coal and natural gas companies from the Obama-era environmental rules. His actions there included an unsuccessful lawsuit that attacked the same regulation that required the Navajo Generating Station to spend as much as $1 billion on new emissions controls.
Mr. Pruitt would also select as his chief of air pollution policy a coal-industry lawyer named William Wehrum, who had spent the past decade as a paid advocate for coal-burning power plant owners. Now he would oversee the dismantling of the coal-industry regulatory system.
Other top advisers on Mr. Pruitt’s team included Andrew Wheeler, a former coal-industry lobbyist, who would go on to replace Mr. Pruitt.....
When the levers of power flipped in Washington on the day Mr. Trump was sworn in, there was an immediate sprint among the cabinet agencies to prove who could move the fastest to help the coal industry.
The Interior Department moved first, lifting a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands that was imposed under Mr. Obama. Mr. Zinke, the department’s chief, also repealed a plan to increase the royalties paid for coal extracted from federal lands. And with the help of Congress, the agency nullified a rule restricting coal companies from dumping waste from coal extraction into area streams."
How'd that go!??
"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.
That is the fastest decline in coal-fuel capacity in any single presidential term, far greater than the rate during either of President Barack Obama’s terms. An additional 73 power plants have announced their intention to close additional coal-burning units this decade, according to a tally by the Sierra Club"
You can't fight the economics of renewables and natural gas. PERIOD. These massive world-wide systems don't respond to presidents and prime ministers and coal ministers, they respond to ECONOMICS. PERIOD.
"But just three days after Mr. Trump’s tweet, the T.V.A. board, including three of Mr. Trump’s four appointees, voted to shut the plant down. The T.V.A. as recently as 2007 drew 58 percent of its power from coal. As of 2020, it would be 15 percent.
“It is not about coal,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s about keeping rates as low as feasible.”"
www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/us/politics/trump-coal-industry.html
And as for the old "save the jobs" canard:
"In 1920, a typical miner in the United States extracted an average of four tons of bituminous coal per day. Today in the western United States, which has the largest surface mines in the nation, that figure is about 140 tons a day.
This surge in productivity meant huge declines in jobs even when coal was the dominant source of fuel for power plants, dropping from 862,000 miners in the 1920s to 135,000 by 1990, before leveling off around 50,000 nationwide during the Obama administration...."
No capitalist cares about JOBS. They care about PROFITS. If they could get profits with ZERO jobs, they would do it. They only hire someone if that person brings in MORE THAN THEY COST. The minute they can offshore, downsize or automate - THEY WILL. Jobs are a necessary evil to making PROFITS.
You want jobs!?!? Me too!
"The renewable energy industry has become a major U.S. employer. E2’s recent Clean Jobs America report found nearly 3.3 million Americans working in clean energy – outnumbering fossil fuel workers by 3-to-1. Nearly 335,000 people work in the solar industry and more than 111,000 work in the wind industry, compared to 211,000 working in coal mining or other fossil fuel extraction."
www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2019/04/22/renewable-energy-job-boom-creating-economic-opportunity-as-coal-industry-slumps/
He didn’t.
Despite Mr. Trump’s stocking his administration with coal-industry executives and lobbyists, taking big donations from the industry, rolling back environmental regulations and intervening directly in cases like the Arizona power plant and mine, coal’s decline has only accelerated in recent years....
Mr. Pruitt came from Oklahoma, where he had gained a national reputation while attorney general for defending coal and natural gas companies from the Obama-era environmental rules. His actions there included an unsuccessful lawsuit that attacked the same regulation that required the Navajo Generating Station to spend as much as $1 billion on new emissions controls.
Mr. Pruitt would also select as his chief of air pollution policy a coal-industry lawyer named William Wehrum, who had spent the past decade as a paid advocate for coal-burning power plant owners. Now he would oversee the dismantling of the coal-industry regulatory system.
Other top advisers on Mr. Pruitt’s team included Andrew Wheeler, a former coal-industry lobbyist, who would go on to replace Mr. Pruitt.....
When the levers of power flipped in Washington on the day Mr. Trump was sworn in, there was an immediate sprint among the cabinet agencies to prove who could move the fastest to help the coal industry.
The Interior Department moved first, lifting a moratorium on new coal leases on federal lands that was imposed under Mr. Obama. Mr. Zinke, the department’s chief, also repealed a plan to increase the royalties paid for coal extracted from federal lands. And with the help of Congress, the agency nullified a rule restricting coal companies from dumping waste from coal extraction into area streams."
How'd that go!??
"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.
That is the fastest decline in coal-fuel capacity in any single presidential term, far greater than the rate during either of President Barack Obama’s terms. An additional 73 power plants have announced their intention to close additional coal-burning units this decade, according to a tally by the Sierra Club"
You can't fight the economics of renewables and natural gas. PERIOD. These massive world-wide systems don't respond to presidents and prime ministers and coal ministers, they respond to ECONOMICS. PERIOD.
"But just three days after Mr. Trump’s tweet, the T.V.A. board, including three of Mr. Trump’s four appointees, voted to shut the plant down. The T.V.A. as recently as 2007 drew 58 percent of its power from coal. As of 2020, it would be 15 percent.
“It is not about coal,” Mr. Johnson said. “It’s about keeping rates as low as feasible.”"
www.nytimes.com/2020/10/05/us/politics/trump-coal-industry.html
And as for the old "save the jobs" canard:
"In 1920, a typical miner in the United States extracted an average of four tons of bituminous coal per day. Today in the western United States, which has the largest surface mines in the nation, that figure is about 140 tons a day.
This surge in productivity meant huge declines in jobs even when coal was the dominant source of fuel for power plants, dropping from 862,000 miners in the 1920s to 135,000 by 1990, before leveling off around 50,000 nationwide during the Obama administration...."
No capitalist cares about JOBS. They care about PROFITS. If they could get profits with ZERO jobs, they would do it. They only hire someone if that person brings in MORE THAN THEY COST. The minute they can offshore, downsize or automate - THEY WILL. Jobs are a necessary evil to making PROFITS.
You want jobs!?!? Me too!
"The renewable energy industry has become a major U.S. employer. E2’s recent Clean Jobs America report found nearly 3.3 million Americans working in clean energy – outnumbering fossil fuel workers by 3-to-1. Nearly 335,000 people work in the solar industry and more than 111,000 work in the wind industry, compared to 211,000 working in coal mining or other fossil fuel extraction."
www.forbes.com/sites/energyinnovation/2019/04/22/renewable-energy-job-boom-creating-economic-opportunity-as-coal-industry-slumps/
