Trump's attempt to bring back coal

With Trump's recent orders, 'America is backsliding toward its most polluted era'

(Image credit: Brian Cassella / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

published 22 April 2025

"Hard hats are back," said Lisa Friedman and Brad Plumer in The New York Times. Surrounded by miners, President Trump last week signed four executive orders designed to revive the declining coal industry. "I call it beautiful, clean coal," Trump said. In reality, coal is "the dirtiest fossil fuel" and "a major contributor to climate change" and health-damaging air pollution. Nonetheless, Trump lifted restrictions on mining and burning it — just the latest of his attempts to reverse progress on reducing emissions that are dangerously heating the planet. Trump recently directed the Justice Department to block "burdensome and ideologically motivated" state climate policies, proposed eliminating the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's scientific research division, and canceled funding for the country's signature National Climate Assessment report. The Environmental Protection Agency even plans to stop requiring polluters to report their greenhouse gas emissions.

Trump is "propping up his favorite energy sources even if markets don't want them," said Jeff Luse in Reason. Coal provided 16 percent of U.S. electricity in 2023, down from 45 percent in 2010. That's not due to some liberal "plot to transition away from coal, like Trump thinks." It's due to "markets and innovation." It's now both cheaper and cleaner for utilities to generate electricity with a mix of natural gas, wind, and solar power. Trump also issued an executive order to revive the coal industry in 2017, said Michael Hawthorne in the Chicago Tribune. Since then, 79 coal plants have closed and 13,000 industry workers have lost their jobs. But Trump is still pushing his "pro-coal agenda" and is willing to sacrifice anything to achieve it.

That includes declaring war on city and state environmental regulations—"the last bastion of U.S. climate action," said Adam Aton and Lesley Clark in Politico. His Justice Department directive to bring legal action against local regulations represents "a sharp escalation in his war on climate policy." It will all add up to an unhealthier country, said Zoë Schlanger in The Atlantic. Burning coal emits brain-damaging mercury and microscopic soot that causes or worsens asthma, COPD, and other lung diseases, and can trigger heart disease, heart attacks, and strokes. Particulates in air pollution have even been linked to dementia, Parkinson's disease, and prenatal damage to fetuses. With Trump's recent orders, "America is backsliding toward its most polluted era" — and the consequences will be lethal.