Part of an occasional series examining President Trump’s progress against Candidate Trump’s promises.
The promise: Candidate Trump promises to return coal miners to a Golden Age of jobs by reopening closed coal mines.
Results So Far: This time-series from the St. Louis Fed illustrates progress in restoring coal mining jobs:
Giving President Trump the benefit of calculating from the employment low of 48,400 in Aug 2016 to the latest numbers of July 2019 of 52,500, I calculate a rise of 8-9% in employment for the coal industry over that three year period. I can not consider that a return to any golden age, seeing as the job total of 52,500 is 70% below the high of 175,200, set in May of 1985.
This comparison is, of course, unfair, as modern machinery inevitably displaces some jobs, hopefully those that are most dangerous. But the fact remains that President Trump has not engineered any great recovery in coal mining jobs. To reinforce this fact, consider these recent remarks by United Mine Workers Of America President Cecil Roberts:
Cecil Roberts said at an event in Washington that his message to Trump and others running for president in 2020 is: “Coal’s not back. Nobody saved the coal industry.” He said coal-fired plants are closing all over the country, calling it a “harsh reality.”
But this is not for a lack of effort. The coal mining industry is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and regulation often receives a majority of the blame for the failing coal industry. When Trump took office, he nominated Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA, and Mr. Pruitt was confirmed by the Senate. Prior to this position, Mr. Pruitt, as Attorney General of Oklahoma, had apparently fought the EPA at the behest of fossil fuel companies. With what are anti-EPA credentials, his nomination would appear to be partial fulfillment by President Trump of the campaign promise, if we accept the implicit “I will try …” which goes along with many political promises to the electorate.
While EPA Administrator, Mr. Pruitt attempted to repeal or otherwise neutralize many regulations, which actions were then contested in court; he has been considered to be ineffective, due to his sloppy approach to his task. We’ll leave the particulars of Mr. Pruitt’s dubious performance while in his position for other times, places, and commentators.
Another effort made by President Trump is on the consumption end, as he attempted to transcend market forces by ordering Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to research how to keep coal-fired (and nuclear) power plants up and running. Mr. Perry’s proposals? Reordering of priorities in favor of research on so-called “High Efficiency Low Emissions” coal-fired power plants, which were also supported by the Obama Administration, while cutting the priority on development of carbon capture technologies. This is generally considered disastrously inadequate in the face of climate change. Perry also suggested a simple bail out and escape from the free market, as the climate change Desmog Blog reported:
Conservative rancor toward the free market in energy systems was on full display this week, as both Secretary of Energy Rick Perry and coal magnate Robert Murray made loud, unapologetic calls to subsidize coal-fired power plants.
“We don’t have a free market in the [electricity] industry, and I’m not sure you want one,” Perry said Monday at the BNEF Future of Energy Summit.
Speaking on Tuesday, Murray, CEO of the country’s largest underground mining company, said that Perry “has to approve” an emergency bailout for coal and nuclear plants in order to “ensure the resilience, reliability, and security of the grid.”
The desperation of the Secretary and the industry was palpable in that report. Republicans do not lightly throw the free market under the bus.
Returning to Candidate Trump’s promise, it may simply be that he is attempting to swim up a waterfall. From the US Energy Information Administration:
Note the share of coal is 13%. Mark Sumner on the progressive site The Daily Kos, a former worker in the coal industry, produces more facts:
This is the hard truth. In 2000, coal generated almost 53 percent of all the electricity in the United States. By 2009, that was 45 percent. In 2014 it was 39 percent. One year later, it was 33 percent.
Look at that last number. Coal’s contribution to the electrical picture dropped by 6 percent in a single year. That didn’t happen because of rules on carbon pollution that were never even made. It didn’t happen because of regulations on water pollution that never went into effect.
It happened because fracking for natural gas has made that fuel extremely abundant, and generators of electricity would much, much rather deal with gas than coal.
From 53% to 13% in 19 years suggests a substantial and negative trend line. Mr. Sumner also has this observation on cutting regulations that should alarm any advocate for more coal mining jobs:
If Congress repealed every environmental law and every safety law that affects coal mining tonight, you know what would happen tomorrow? There would be fewer coal jobs. And fewer still the day after.
In fact, the regulations that Trump is repealing will make that happen faster. The rule that was changed on allowing more coal waste in streams won’t make new coal jobs. It will allow mining companies to replace underground mines with mountaintop removal mines. Those mines use far fewer people. When Trump signed that document and handed you the pen, what he was repealing was coal jobs.
Was President Trump truly trying to fulfill Candidate Trump’s promises when cutting regulations? It’s hard to know, because Mr. Trump, despite his claims of being the most knowledgeable person in many fields of human endeavour, does not appear to actually be cognizant of many details in self-proclaimed fields of expertise. It is possible he advocated for that particular regulation repeal without realizing he would hurt those he had promised to help.
Or perhaps he, cold-bloodedly, did know. It’s a judgment for my reader to make.
The Bigger Picture: But the better question to ask is whether or not Candidate Trump should have ever made promises to the coal miners in the first place. Regardless of claims by the industry known as King Coal, coal is widely considered as a very dirty energy source, emitting ash, mercury, uranium, and climate gases with abandon. Its ease of availability and provision of jobs, even those of exceptional danger, are no longer an adequate counterweight to its negatives of pollution in a world which is heavily overpopulated. Coal does not scale up.
Candidate Trump may have promised to bring back coal mining jobs, and made some attempts to do so, but success would have guaranteed more deaths through pollution, and a more miserable world overall.
The best reading of the evidence is that Trump made an attempt to fulfill his promise, but was ineffective in doing so, and probably should never have made those promises in the first place. In a world where coal is becoming less and less appropriate as an energy choice, Candidate Trump should not have encouraged miners to stay in their shrinking professions.
In a complex topic such as this, my reader may come to a different conclusion, but to my eye it appears clear that, regardless of his attempts to fulfill his promises, this promise was ill-considered and a mark of poor judgment by the candidate, and now president.
