By repealing the Clean Power Plan, Administrator Scott Pruitt’s Environmental Protection Agency is utterly failing to protect the environment, and utterly failing the people who live in the environment, as in all of us, who need clean air, clean water, and good jobs. As we point out in our latest, seriously silly Don’t Just Sit There - Do Something! video, industrial point sources, and power plants in particular, are a serious problem for our climate and our health!
The Science
Ninety-seven percent of climate scientists agree that man-made global warming, also called climate change, is a big, urgent, worsening problem. According to the United States Environmental Protection Agency, electricity generation from coal and natural gas power plants is responsible for almost a third of our carbon dioxide pollution, which causes global warming. And yes, this information is even available from the agency under Pruitt, though you now have to dig a bit on the website to find it. In addition to the climate impacts, burning coal also comes with toxic consequences: to air, with increased particulate matter and ozone; and to water, with acid rain, mercury in our fish and toxic ponds that occasionally rupture, sending mercury and arsenic into waterways.
The Policy
In Paris in Dec. 2015, all but two countries finally agreed to take significant steps to protect our climate and our future. And then President Trump made the unpopular decision to pull the United States out of the Paris Agreement. That questionable move has left the rest of the world reaping the benefits of new jobs and industry and technological potential while we have given up our leadership role around climate change to China and the European Union.
It’s not a big surprise that the Clean Power Plan is on the chopping block, because it was the main method by which we planned to make the pollution reductions we promised and are nationally reneging on under the Paris Agreement. In addition, the Clean Power Plan was estimated to prevent 1,500 to 3,600 premature deaths and 90,000 asthma attacks in children across the United States.
The fact that the Clean Power Plan announcement comes as most of the U.S. is experiencing a warmer-than-average fall season, millions of Americans are trying to recover from hurricanes, and deadly wildfires ravage California, feels less like Nero fiddling as Rome burns, and more like actively pouring gasoline on the flames.
What’s Next
Pruitt says this move means the “war on coal is over.” While it makes for a good sound bite, the “war on coal” is a simplistic framing of a complicated situation. Coal jobs have been disappearing, yes, but for 50 years, and not because Barack Obama started single handedly closing coal plants as a first grader. The decline is primarily because of automation and the falling price of natural gas. But no one should be forgotten or abandoned. We all want the same things: good jobs and a clean, safe home. Coal country deserves better than a continuing dependence on a single, declining industry with disastrous consequences for air, land and water. And guess what? Solar energy, which as of 2016 contributes just shy of one percent of our energy supply, already employs more than twice as many people as the coal industry. The jobs of tomorrow are in the energy industries of tomorrow and no matter how pretty Pruitt makes it sound, scrapping the Clean Power Plan doesn’t do anything to bring coal jobs back. So in fact, Pruitt is being dishonest as well as damaging. The Clean Power Plan would support the transition that is needed to bring tomorrow’s energy jobs to coal country and encourage reinvestment and retraining in our communities, minus the asthma and black lung.
The good news is that Pruitt’s move is going to face a lot of legal challenges. Several states and organizations already plan to fight the repeal. Public comment is required for this rule change, too; comments are being accepted by EPA until December 15, so make your voice heard. Better choices will require the efforts of citizens to connect, stand up and be heard in support.
Pruitt, who personally refuses to accept the overwhelming scientific evidence that carbon dioxide causes climate change and who has spent a career fighting efforts to protect the natural spaces on which we rely, is doing exactly the job you’d expect him to do as head of the Environmental Protection Agency. Still, it’s hard to imagine a bigger abandonment of his duties than forsaking our health, our economy and our future by repealing the Clean Power Plan.