Trump Executive Order Guts Obama Legacy On Climate Change
Desperate for a story to change the narrative of failure and Russian collusion, Donald Trump on Tuesday signed a sweeping executive order that largely reverses former President Barack Obama’s aggressive climate change policies.
As usual, Trump is trying to suggest that letting corporations poison the planet is a fair trade-off for jobs. However as many have noted, Donald Trump’s order is likely not to lead to any significant increase in coal jobs.
According to the New York Times, “The order also takes aim at a suite of narrower but significant Obama-era climate and environmental policies, including lifting a short-term ban on new coal mining on public lands.”
The order does not, however, address America’s participation in the Paris Climate Agreement.
Energy economists argue that Trump’s executive order is not likely to accomplish much. Coal has been in a long-term secular decline over the last several decades and energy providers around the country have largely replaced coal with natural gas which is cheaper and cleaner. Trump’s order will do nothing to change that. And in addition coal jobs have largely been replaced by machines so any increase in coal mining will not likely lead to an increase in coal mining jobs.
