Different Takes: Weakening Clean Air Laws Weakens Americans’ Health; Changes To Coal Industry Won’t Poison Health
Opinion writers weigh in on how the recent decision to soften rules regulating coal-fired power plants will impact our health.
Chicago Sun Times:
Donald Trump Puts The Coal Industry Ahead Of Your Health
Dirtier air, hundreds more deaths, and a worsening of climate change. That’s what’s we as a nation can expect now that the Trump administration, ever dismissive of both scientific fact and environmental well-being, has proposed to scrap the Obama-era Clean Power Plan in favor of a free-for-all on restricting emissions from coal-burning power plants. So here’s the scorecard: coal plants and greenhouse gas emissions, 1; your right to breathe clean air, 0. (8/22)
The New York Times:
A Black And Sooty Mess
Casting a lifeline to the sinking coal industry and its shrinking work force, the Trump administration announced on Tuesday a plan to weaken regulations of coal-fired power plants that President Barack Obama had put in place as part of an effort to reduce America’s emissions of planet-warming gases. The plan is wrongheaded on every level. It favors an old, dirty fuel and does nothing to accelerate the push toward the cleaner, renewable fuels on whose development the world is depending for real progress against global warming. ...For good measure, the proposal would also weaken provisions in the clean air laws designed to regulate pollutants like smog and soot and, in so doing, cause as many as 1,400 additional premature deaths annually by 2030, as well as many thousands of respiratory infections because of increases in fine particulate matter linked to heart and lung disease. (8/22)
The Wall Street Journal:
Not The Climate Apocalypse
Of the Obama Administration’s many power grabs, none was more audacious than its bid to regulate coal-fired electric power out of business. The Trump Administration is now proposing to rewrite the rule in a way that honors the law and still reduces carbon emissions, yet it is being portrayed as radical. (8/21)
Detroit News:
Coal's Fate Is Sealed; Trump Can't Change It
Right on cue, predictions of widespread death and environmental ruin sprang from the Trump administration’s decision this week to replace the Obama-era Clean Power Plan. But the reality is that whether the rules stayed or went, coal power is on a downward spiral. The economics of burning coal to produce electricity no longer make sense. That’s why coal power production has been rapidly declining and was on the wane even before President Barack Obama unveiled his strategy in 2015 for making coal obsolete. (8/22)
Bloomberg:
Trump EPA's Affordable Clean Energy Rule Is Neither
The best that can be said for the Environmental Protection Agency’s new plan to loosen restrictions on coal-fired power plants is that it will probably never be put into practice. States are expected to sue, rightly, because the proposal fails to comply with the Supreme Court’s 2007 demand that the EPA responsibly regulate U.S. carbon emissions. The EPA itself acknowledges that its plan would not only increase carbon emissions but also lead to as many as 1,600 premature deaths annually. (8/21)
USA Today:
Trump Fired Up To Save Big Coal Instead Of Earth
Besides trashing the Clean Power Plan, the president is pulling the United States out of a Paris climate accord that nearly 200 other nations signed, and he intends to roll back vehicle-efficiency standards aimed at reducing tailpipe emissions, the greatest domestic source of greenhouse gases. The new power plant rules and vehicle-efficiency rollbacks will likely be tied up in court challenges for years. That might stall Trump's great leap backward in the fight against climate change. But the nation needs to move forward, aggressively, in what is becoming an existential struggle. (8/22)
