(TriceEdneyWire.com)—As they say in horror movies, the call is coming from inside the house.
Under Donald Trump, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reversed its own mission. And last week, EPA Administration Lee Zeldin outright declared war on the American people.
Zeldin announced 31 actions he celebrated as “the largest deregulatory announcement in US history.” The administration is attempting to undo critical progress that is currently saving lives and saving Americans’ money—on health care costs, energy bills, and more. Moreover, Trump and Zeldin are trying to undercut the EPA’s very ability to do its job and protect our health, our communities, and our futures.
If Trump and Zeldin are successful in undoing the rules they have targeted, the consequences are guaranteed to be dire. Dire for the thousands of Americans who will die needlessly every year. Dire for the thousands of children who spend more days in the hospital and fewer days in school. Dire for working families whose electricity and health care bills will go up, and whose air and water will become the things that are killing them rather than keeping them alive.
Dire for the tens of millions of American children and adults living with asthma—like Kyla Peck, whom I spoke with last World Asthma Day. Kyla recalled her first rude awakening with how poor air quality was not just a threat to her daily physical wellbeing but also her bank account:
“I was home in Chicago from college, maybe 20 years old, and I had a really, really bad asthma attack. I was hospitalized for maybe about 12 hours. Then I received the bill. Even after insurance paid their part, I owed about $500. I was in college; I had no money … It was stressful, not only having to navigate the asthma attack but having to learn to navigate my own financial situation living with this illness.”
Now let us look at just one of the rules under attack by the Trump administration that are helping people like Kyla every day. Just over a year ago, when the EPA was fulfilling its mission, it finalized improved air quality standards. At the time, the agency estimated that, come 2032, that one rule alone would “prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths and 290,000 lost workdays, yielding up to $46 billion in net health benefits;” that in that year, for every dollar spent from that rule, “there could be as much as $77 in human health benefits.”
Announcing that rule back in February of 2024, then EPA Administrator Michael Regan said, “Cleaner air means that our children have brighter futures, and people can live more productive and active lives.”
It is pretty hard to argue with that statement… unless you are not bothered by your actions killing Americans and making their lives worse. And that is exactly what we are seeing with this presidential administration. What a difference a year makes.
Among Zeldin’s 31 actions is doing away with the EPA’s own 2009 finding that planet-warming greenhouse gas pollution “threatens the public health and welfare of current and future generations.” That finding has been the underpinning of years of EPA actions that have protected Americans, saved countless lives, and made it possible for us to combat the climate crisis on multiple fronts.
This week we celebrate three global days of recognition meant to highlight the importance and urgency of protecting our environment – for the sake of both nature and mankind. This Friday is the International Day of Forests, highlighting how forests and trees “fuel food security, support livelihoods, and sustain our planet.” Saturday is World Water Day, with a theme this year of fighting the climate crisis to mitigate the devastation of our rapidly melting glaciers. And Sunday is World Meteorological Day, with this year’s theme focused on the importance of early warning systems in reducing the harm of climate-driven extreme weather events. These three days all highlight areas in which the Trump administration is decimating America’s leadership and gutting our own government’s ability to address threats—including the administration’s mass firings and reckless budget slashing at agencies like the US Forest Service (which helps lead US efforts to combat wildfires) and the National Weather Service.
With last week’s move by the EPA, it is sadly ironic that the Trump administration’s efforts to undermine science, common sense, climate resilience, and public health are coming to a crescendo—so far—right as the world turns its attention to the necessity of environmental protection. Americans will not take these attacks lying down. We are—and will keep—fighting back.
(Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club and a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.)
In a recent interview with Fox News, Gov. Morrisey extolled the virtues of coal in US competition with China in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) race, “advanced manufacturing,” and energy. He is wrong on all counts. The way we compete with China and ensure American economic leadership in this century—while also building an economy that lifts all boats at home—is by accelerating our transition away from dirty and unnecessary fossil fuels like coal.
As Mountain State Spotlight pointed out in its recap of Morrisey’s State of the State address last month, to double down on coal “is to continue the tradition of the same extractive industries that have left streams polluted, men dying in their 50s, and towns with soot in their attics.”
Gov. Morrisey should be embracing clean energy like other big coal states have done. He and the other public officials keeping West Virginia anchored to coal are prioritizing coal executives’ profits over the state’s working families.
A report released this past summer by Energy Innovation Policy and Technology showed West Virginia’s stubborn reliance on coal is the reason increases in the state’s electricity costs have outpaced inflation. The report’s author, Brendan Pierpont pointed out that even when “utilities have conducted analyses that suggest that these coal plants should retire, regulators have pushed uneconomic plans to stay online, push the utilities to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in new investment in those plants and requiring those coal plants to run even when there’s cheaper power available on the market. So these costs are all costs that are going to electricity consumers.”
Appalachian Power, one of West Virginia’s main energy providers, has increased monthly residential prices by at least 30 percent since 2013. That is 30 times more than the relative one percent increase in average residential electricity prices across the country over the same time period. The Center for Economic and Policy Research says that is because “West Virginia’s energy providers rely heavily on inefficient coal plants.”
Instead of clinging to coal, West Virginia needs to stand up for its ratepayers—as well as West Virginians’ health and jobs —like other major coal states have done. West Virginia is the country’s second largest producer of coal. Pennsylvania is third and Illinois is fourth.
As of 2023, Pennsylvania had roughly 4,800 people working in the coal mining industry and more than 96,000 employed in clean energy jobs. In the same year, the Illinois coal industry employed a hair over 2,300 people and had nearly 129,000 clean energy jobs. Progress is happening in West Virginia too, where even the state’s dogged devotion to coal could not keep the benefits of the landmark Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) from reaching the state. At least 5,768 clean energy jobs have been added just since passage of the IRA in 2022. And while as of 2023 there were still 14,000 coal mining jobs in West Virginia, you could still hear the sound of coal’s death knell when you realize that figure is down from more than 21,000 coal jobs in 2010.
More numbers from 2023: coal accounted for just 5.4 percent of Pennsylvania’s utility-scale electricity generation that year and 15.3 percent of Illinois’, whereas West Virginia’s was a whopping 85.6 percent— the highest in the nation. This is in part due to a 2021 directive issued by the West Virginia Public Service Commission that requires coal plants in the state to operate at a minimum capacity factor of 69 percent —a mindbogglingly backwards policy that illustrates West Virginia’s addiction to kowtowing to the coal industry and carries a steep cost West Virginia households.
Since 2010, 389 coal-fired power plants have been retired or had their retirements announced. Internal Sierra Club analysis based on the Clean Air Task Force’s “Toll from Coal” study shows this reduction in coal burning has prevented nearly 62,000 premature deaths and saved Americans $29 BILLION in health care costs.
If West Virginia wants to show it is serious about protecting its people’s health, pocketbooks, and economic opportunity, it needs to get serious about ditching coal.
(Ben Jealous is the Executive Director of the Sierra Club and a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania.)
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