Using an obscure law that allows Congress to review regulations before they take effect, the Senate voted to reverse the Stream Protection Rule, which seeks to protect the nation’s waterways from debris generated by a practice called surface mining. The Interior Department had said the rule would protect 6,000 miles of streams and 52,000 acres of forests by keeping coal mining debris away from nearby waters.
For more details on the effects of this change on employment in the coal mining industry and on the environment, I encourage you to read the article. Proponents, of course, are claiming these regulations were designed to destroy the coal industry. In fact, mechanization and the kinds of free market forces Republicans so much love to tout but rarely actually practice have been the prime causes.
How long will it take all those unemployed miners who voted for Trump believing his impossible promises to restore the industry to its past glories because they thought he would create new jobs, to realize they have been screwed….not just once, but over and over.
From recent actions, it is clear that mining companies are moving to gut existing pension funds and health benefits for miners, many of them suffering from black lung disease and industrial injuries that put them out of work.
Proposals to gut Obamacare without a working replacement and block grant Medicare and Medicaid and “reform” Social Security, and cut food stamps and rural health grants are very likely to follow.
And now the GOP is proudly restoring the kind of highly mechanized mining practices that will restore the rape of the environment around those mining communities that still exist while doing nothing to create new jobs….but in fact reduce them still further.
A study by the Congressional Research Service, cited in the Times article noted that with the regulations in place, about 590 mining jobs were threatened. Even so, the study finds that employment in the coal industry will drop by 15,000 jobs from a level of 90,000 in 2012.
Trump cannot create jobs in this dying industry. China...a major importer of American coal recently announced cancellation of plans for 100 coal fired plants. American utilities are doing likewise because such plants are dirtier, subject to constant lawsuits and less efficient that those powered by natural gas, now in abundance due to the boom in US fracking. At the same time, solar and wind generation has been soaring, helped in part by federal tax incentives and advances in battery technology are beginning to offer hope as a means to store peak generation of solar and wind for use at night, thus evening flow and improving efficiency still furtherd.
However, you can be certain that pressures from the traditional energy companies will be intense to eliminate the kinds of subsidies oil and gas have enjoyed for decades. And in this political climate they could well succeed.