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From Common Dreams
Highlights
- 🏛️ Trump’s Coal Directive: Trump calls for immediate action to boost coal production to compete against China.
- 🚨 Health Risks: Critics highlight the severe health impacts of coal, including hundreds of thousands of premature deaths.
- 💼 Fossil Fuel Interests: Trump’s cabinet consists of allies from the fossil fuel industry, raising concerns about regulatory integrity.
- 🏆 Financial Impacts: Peabody Energy’s stock rose by 3.5% after Trump’s announcement, emphasizing the financial motivations behind coal advocacy.
- 🌍 Renewable Energy Growth: Renewables now account for a higher percentage of U.S. electricity generation compared to coal.
- 📝 Sierra Club’s Response: The environmental group denounced Trump’s claims about the benefits of coal, advocating for a transition to cleaner energy sources.
- 📉 Economic Viability: 99% of coal plants are more expensive to operate compared to wind or solar energy, questioning the economic rationale behind coal investments.
After U.S. President Donald Trump declared on Truth Social on Monday night that he is ordering his administration “to immediately begin producing Energy with BEAUTIFUL, CLEAN COAL,” a leader at the grassroots environmental group Sierra Club quickly hit back, calling the move “completely delusional.”
Trump said he was announcing the move as a means to counter China’s economic edge. The announcement comes “after years of being held captive by Environmental Extremists, Lunatics, Radicals, and Thugs, allowing other Countries, in particular China, to gain tremendous Economic advantage over us by opening up hundreds of all Coal Fire Power Plants,” Trump wrote.
It was not immediately clear what Trump’s directive was referring to or how his announcement on social media would impact U.S. policy, according to Bloomberg.
“There is no such thing as clean coal. There is only coal that pollutes our air and water so severely that nearly half a million Americans have died prematurely from coal in the last two decades,” said Sierra Club director of climate policy Patrick Drupp in a statement Tuesday. “Donald Trump is not concerned with Americans’ health or economic wellbeing. He is only concerned with helping out his billionaire buddies in the fossil fuel industry.”
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Read the full post at Common Dreams.
