Let’s just admit the truth here, Trump has with his decision to drop out of the Paris Climate Accords essentially managed to bring nearly the entire world together. Together while standing in opposition against him.
So he’s literally united the states. And it’s not just them.
President Trump has made empty promises to make the coal industry great again, vowing to reverse decades of the industry’s downward employment trajectory. In previous blog posts (see hereand here), we have shown how his promises to put coal miners back to work will be a tall order. Here, we introduce another reason why coal will face an uphill battle: automation.
The problem facing the coal industry is not unique: Automation is rapidly reducing employment in mining and manufacturing. Across a wide range of industries, from car manufacturing to computing, robots or artificial intelligence are increasingly taking over roles traditionally performed by humans. The same is true for coal mining.
More importantly, automation has been eating into coal jobs over a long period of time—years before concerns about climate change led to the environmental regulations that President Trump solely blames for the industry’s decline. Nationwide, employment in the coal mining industry peaked in 1920, when it employed roughly 785,000 people. The more recent decline started in 1980, when the industry employed approximately 242,000 people. By 2000, 15 years before the Environmental Protection Agency first proposed the Clean Power Plan and released new pollution guidelines to cut toxic emissions from power plants, industry employment had dropped to 102,000. By 2015, coal mining had shed 59 percent of its workforce, compared to 1980.
So even though as Trump claims there is a new Coal Mine opening up this year, because of automation, it will only create 70-100 jobs.
While blasting the Paris climate accord as unfair to coal miners, Trump pointed to the "opening of a brand-new mine." It opens soon and he's been invited to attend when it does, the president added.
Trump didn't name the facility, but the Acosta Coal Mine in western Pennsylvania is set to open on June 8. The mine will produce coal used for steelmaking and is expected to create 70 to 100 full-time jobs, according to owner Corsa Coal.
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A Columbia University study estimates the coal industry lost roughly 60,000 jobs since the end of 2011 and hundreds of thousands since the 1920s. That's because more and more of the world's energy production is coming from clean energy like solar and cleaner sources like natural gas.
The resulting job loss has caused a lot of pain in regions of the country that depend on coal. As a candidate, Trump appealed to those voters.
Alleviating that pain just 70-100 jobs at a time is going to take until the end of the century to replace the 60,000 coal jobs that have been lost since 2011. And where is the demand for all those this coal going to come from exactly?
At this point, only one “Clean Coal” power plant in the nation, and it just went into operation in January.
On multiple occasions throughout his campaign and after his election, President Donald Trump has talked about his plans to promote the expansion of “clean coal.” But it appears the industry has gotten a kickstart without him. The nation’s first large-scale “clean coal” facility—the largest of its kind in the world—was just completed and declared operational on Jan. 10.
The Petra Nova project, a joint venture between NRG Energy, Inc. and JX Nippon Oil & Gas Exploration Corporation, is a coal-burning power plant located just outside of Houston. The “clean” part of its operation comes from its ability to capture some of its own carbon dioxide emissions, rather than emitting them into the air. While the plant was only just declared fully operational this month, it first began capturing emissions in September—and since then, it’s trapped more than 100,000 tons of carbon dioxide.
According to an NRG news release, the plant is capable of capturing up to 5,000 tons of carbon dioxide per day, which is equivalent to removing about 350,000 cars from the road. For reference, the Environmental Protection Agency estimates that U.S. greenhouse gas emissions in 2014 totaled nearly 7 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents, which comes to around 19 million tons per day.
On top of all that there is still that Trump has also cut safety regulations so the already problematic issue of Coal Mines blowing up due to inadequate venting of methane gas and poor safety standards is likely to simply get worse.
A joint investigation by NPR and Mine Safety and Health News found that thousands of mine operators fail to pay safety penalties, even as they continue to manage dangerous — and sometimes deadly — mining operations. Most unpaid penalties are between two and 10 years overdue; some go back two decades. And federal regulators seem unable or unwilling to make mine owners pay.
Our joint investigation looked at 20 years of federal mine data through the first quarter of 2014, including details about fines, payments, violations and injuries. We used raw Department of Labor data and delinquency records provided by the Mine Safety and Health Administration to calculate the number of injuries and injury rates, and violations and gravity of violations, at mines with delinquent penalties while they were delinquent.
Among the findings:
- 2,700 mining company owners failed to pay nearly $70 million in delinquent penalties.
- The top nine delinquents owe more than $1 million each.
- Mines that don't pay their penalties are more dangerous than mines that do, with injury rates 50 percent higher.
- Delinquent mines reported close to 4,000 injuries in the years they failed to pay, including accidents that killed 25 workers and left 58 others with permanent disabilities.
- Delinquent mines continued to violate the law, with more than 130,000 violations, while they failed to pay mine safety fines.
This is quite simply going the wrong direction. Absolutely and totally.
We know that. Trump doesn’t.
And his other “Big Idea” of exporting the technology of hydraulic fracturing to the rest of the world has it’s major problems. Like ground water contamination….
The Environmental Protection Agency's final report on a five-year study finds hydraulic fracturing can in fact contaminate drinking water in some cases.
The EPA's presentation of the final assessment marks a significant change in the way the report was initially presented in 2015. Energy companies seized on that presentation because it said the EPA found no "widespread, systemic impact" on drinking water supplies.
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The EPA found cases of effects on drinking water at each stage of the fracking water cycle, from acquisition to disposal.
The effects discussed in the report tended to happen near fracking wells. Cases ranged from mere temporary water quality changes to levels of contamination that made drinking wells unusable.
The EPA noted that "data gaps and uncertainties" limited the agency's ability to fully assess the risks of fracking to groundwater supplies.
And increased earthquakes occurring in areas that don't have fault lines.
Federal regulators have tied a string of earthquakes in north Texas to oil and gas drilling operations in the state.
An Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) report filed with the Texas Railroad Commission this month concluded that the frequency of earthquakes in the state correlates to the number and location of injection or disposal wells for hydraulic fracturing wastewater there.
“In light of findings from several researchers, its own analysis of some cases and the fact that earthquakes diminished in some areas following shut-in or reduced injection volume of targeted wells, EPA believes there is a significant possibility that North Texas earthquake activity is associated with disposal wells,” said the report, via The Texas Tribune.
The EPA said it’s concerned about the seismic activity around the Dallas/Fort Worth area because of the “potential impact on public health and the environment, including underground drinking water.
So Trump has essentially put himself and the states that fail to #Resist and fight back against him on a path that will not bring back the jobs they’ve lost, will likely increase the danger and risks for those few jobs that are produced, while it’s quite likely that Europe, China and other countries will reject his attempts to export fracking technology which has been shown to contaminate ground water and generate fault-less earthquakes Plus these efforts were already in deep trouble due to the increase methane emissions fracking generates.
For Friends of the Earth Europe, Antoine Simon countered: “The failure, so far, of shale gas development in Europe is mostly due to a failure by the fossil fuels industry to understand the differing context here. We have a higher population density, a population not used to living in close proximity of gas production fields and higher environmental standards.”
With the possible exception of Spain, the UK is now the last repository of hope for those keen to establish a shale gas industry on this side of the Atlantic.
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When burnt, shale gas produces slightly less CO2 than natural gas, which itself emits half as much as coal. But the picture is less clear when it includes methane emissions, which are 56 times more potent than CO2 over a 20-year period, and could trigger feedback loops of global warming.
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While oil and gas prices remain low, the economics of shale gas recovery are unlikely to tempt investors into the European market.
But in the context of the Paris agreement, the risk of buying into a surge in atmospheric methane emissions – or a portfolio of stranded assets – is likely to weigh heavily on the industry’s prospects, outside the UK at least, for some time to come.
The plain fact is that Trump made this move too late because Solar Power is already the cheapest form of energy production in the world.
Over the past six years, the cost of solar energy has dropped dramatically, to the point where it is now even cheaper than wind power in emerging markets like China and India. This may be largely due to rising investments in solar over the last few years. Now, there is electricity being produced in Chile for $29.10 per megawatt hour–half the price of power produced by coal.
"Renewables are robustly entering the era of undercutting" energy made by fossil fuels, Bloomberg New Energy Finance chairman Michael Liebreich wrote this week.
And it seems that Trump made his final decision on this, largely out of petty pique, spite and abject numbing fear.
Trump got into a growing fight with Europe. France rejected Bannon’s favorite Le Pen. He met with and got disrespected and criticized by the leaders of NATO and the EU. He got mad. Both Merkel and Macron spoke about him as a bully and a child. Macron has happily spoken publicly about over-manning Trump when they met in person.
This isn’t about climate and it isn’t about Trump’s base. It’s about sticking it to the leaders of Europe. That’s what gave the Bannonites the edge. That and one other thing.
Trump is scared. He’s entering a a widening gyre of political crisis over Russia. He’s scared and he’s angry and he needs friends. So he’s more and more likely to hug his base – both the most aggressive advisors and the most committed supporters. He’s trying to bring back Corey Lewandowski, his wildest and most troubling-driving advisor who has the unshakable loyalty and lickspittledom Trump now requires. Indeed, we can take it as a given that as the Russia scandal crisis deepens Trump will become more aggressive and more extreme in his policies both to maintain his emotional equilibrium and reinforce his backing from a shrinking base of supporters. This is as certain as night follows day.
Or as I said some time ago, he’ s his own — and now the world’s — worst enemy right now.
The cities, states, companies and countries that stand with #TheResistance will prosper and grow economically using green tech while — sadly — Trump’s luddite rustbelt is far more likely to continue suffer and fall further behind economically with weakened health and safety. The climate will still be protected by the Climate Alliance and the countries that adhere to CO2 reduction goals, mostly in spite of Trump, but the economic benefits he claims to seek won’t be enjoyed by exactly the people who have mistakenly put their trust and faith in his tiny, tiny Purell coated hands.
Instead of Blue and Red States, we’ll soon have nothing but Green States — and Brown ones.
Eventually they’ll relive the sad tragic mistake they’ve made as they slowly become the Brown-belt from continuing job losses, increased violence and opiod addiction, just as has occurred decades past within our inner cities, while Trump — who simply doesn’t believe in the ability of government to benefit people — will continue to ignore the consequences of what he’s done in his mad dash to destroy the federal government’s revenue base in exchange for massive tax cuts for people who don’t need them all in order to cut all safety and job retraining programs that might have helped them.
He’s completely and totally failed them, they just don’t know it yet. And he’s given us a massive unifying boost that will likely be worse than he darkest nightmares.
Viva Le Resistance.
