CHARLESTON, W. Va. – Donald Trump has promised to revitalize the coal industry and put miners back to work, but some political observers say he's raising false hope.

According to the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, the decline in state coal production is being driven by cheap natural gas, low-cost wind and solar, competition from coal mined in Western states, and the fact that the easy-to-get Appalachian coal is gone.

For Walton Shepherd, staff attorney for the Natural Resources Defense Council, when Trump and local politicians blame a so-called 'war on coal,' they're actually hurting people in the coalfields.

"That's probably the biggest betrayal by some of the elected officials in Appalachia,” Shepherd said, "pretending that protecting the environment is the one responsible for this - when in fact, it's just the marketplace.”

Trump has so far given few details on how he plans to put miners back to work. Democratic Governor-elect Jim Justice has made a similar promise, also without much detail.

Large-scale coal mining is still going on in West Virginia, and critics point out that environmental damage has hardly slowed. Ted Boettner, executive director at the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy, said his organization expects production to settle at about 40 percent of its most recent peak, about 15 years ago.

"It'll probably level out around 70 million tons, from a high of about 165 million tons,” Boettner said. "The chances of a rebound, especially in southern West Virginia, are close to zero."

James Van Nostrand, director of the Center for Energy and Sustainable Development at West Virginia University College of Law, said there are ways Trump could loosen regulations on the mining industry, but those are pretty radical steps that would only lower costs a little.

"You can abandon the stream-protection rule, you can abandon the Waters of the United States rule, you can have lax enforcement of the MSHA regulations,” Van Nostrand said. "But what's driving the decline of the coal industry is geology, and it's economics."

(An earlier report on Trump's position on climate change regulations is available here.)





get more stories like this via email

LOS ANGELES -- California-based facilities are refining half of all the oil drilled in the Amazon rain forests, according to a new report by the groups Amazon Watch and Stand.earth. Now, organizations fighting climate change are calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom to end oil imports from the Amazon region.

Paul Koretz, member of the Los Angeles City Council, said California should not be a party to the destruction of a region that sequesters a huge amount of carbon and circulates 20% of the world's oxygen.

"As the Amazon is being logged, burned and drilled, and converted to other land uses, we're losing more and more of it," Koretz pointed out. "And at some point, it could cause climate change to be impossible to reverse."

At the recent climate conference in Glasgow, Scotland, California joined the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance, an organization committed to an oil-free future.

On Earth Day this year, the governor committed to end fracking in the state by 2024 and all oil production by 2045. In October, Newsom proposed a 3,200-foot buffer zone for all new wells near residential neighborhoods. The oil industry claims the moves will cost the state jobs and tax revenue.

The group Elected Officials to Protect America (EOPA) is circulating an online petition, asking the governor to phase out oil production even faster and commit the state to 100% clean energy in all sectors.

Dominic Frongillo, co-founder and executive director of EOPA, said the state must defeat its oil addiction.

"California can ramp down production, increase use of clean cars, phase out oil drilling locally, and aggressively invest in a transition to clean energy," Frongillo asserted. "We won't need that oil."

According to Greenpeace, the Amazon Basin sequesters 100 billion metric tons of carbon, more than ten times the amount of global emissions from fossil fuels.

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Groups say new draft rules proposed by the Ohio Department of Natural Resources (ODNR) do not go far enough to properly regulate oil and gas waste facilities, or injection wells, used to dispose of liquid waste.

A hearing is set for Dec. 6.

Megan Hunter, senior attorney for Earthjustice, said the rules lack transparency, and fall short of what is necessary to protect human health and the environment, because of loopholes and how much discretion they give to the agency to waive requirements.

She argued neither waste facilities nor injection wells are required to be set far enough back from surface water.

"They can be located within 100 feet of surface waters, within a developed drinking-water well, for example, and the same is true for the injection wells," Hunter outlined. "And that's just not a great enough distance to be protective of surface and groundwater."

Hunter noted Ohio receives liquid oil and gas waste from Pennsylvania and West Virginia in addition to its own products. She contended one of the biggest problems with many injection wells is they do not require the waste to be properly characterized, meaning first responders who may be dealing with a leak or a spill might not know what kinds of chemicals or radioactivity they could be facing.

Silverio Caggiano, retired battalion chief for the Youngstown Fire Department, said if his team gets a call about a leak, it can be dangerous if they don't know what they could be exposed to. He pointed to what are known as "right-to-know" laws, where companies are required to offer information about what chemicals are used and stored in their facilities.

"On a fire-department and first-responder level, the reason why those Right to Know laws are placed in there was so I can prepare for something," Caggiano explained. "If XYZ company is going to put something in there, and they're going to be using this chemical, I have to figure out if I have the ability to detect it and mitigate it."

Groups emphasized the new rules require less oversight than current regulations. They urged the ODNR to hold the oil and gas industry accountable by requiring regular reporting and transparency.

LANSING, Mich. -- A public utility in Michigan is launching a pilot program to reduce its methane emissions.

Consumers Energy has what it calls the Enhanced Infrastructure Replacement Program, to identify and replace underperforming and outdated natural-gas pipelines, which emit methane when they are not working properly.

Terry DeDoes, senior public information director for the utility company, said it recently launched two new high-tech vehicles to better locate leaks.

He pointed out the new vehicles are a thousand times more sensitive than the current units, and will provide much more data.

"They will help us respond more quickly to issues on our natural-gas pipeline as well as make decisions about what pipeline should be replaced as a priority over other pipelines, as we're looking at reducing the methane emissions from our system," DeDoes explained.

The Biden administration recently announced its intent to restore and strengthen methane regulations rolled back by the former Trump administration, after world leaders came to a voluntary agreement about limiting methane emissions at the United Nations global climate-change conference this month.

DeDoes added with the dire warnings from international experts about the need to electrify, it's important for Consumers Energy and other utilities to really participate. He emphasized the company aims to go coal-free by 2025, and have 90% renewable energy by 2040.

"We plan on continuing that and ramping up those activities so that we can achieve net-zero methane emissions by 2030," DeDoes stated. "That's our goal."

Methane emissions have been linked to negative health outcomes for surrounding communities as well as greenhouse-gas accumulation and climate change. DeDoes contended it is important for companies to keep what he called a triple bottom line, and think about people and the planet in addition to their profits.