by Amber Reimondo, Energy Director
“You know what this is? You know what this says?” President Trump asked, turning to the more than a dozen coal miners who stood behind him at a ceremony at EPA headquarters on March 28, 2017. Trump answered his own question, “You’re going back to work.” And with the stroke of a pen, Trump issued a sweeping executive order that he claimed would bring back coal jobs and “unlock job-producing natural shale gas.” The irony in that statement is cringeworthy.
The executive order is intended to claw back several Obama-era climate change regulations. While this action will undo much of U.S. progress toward addressing climate change, it cannot address the real factors depressing the coal market and thus, cannot actually bring back America’s coal jobs. Ultimately, this order will harm coal communities and workers across the Colorado Plateau, placing them at a further economic disadvantage. For the Grand Canyon Trust, this order signals the need to buckle down in the legal, legislative, and grassroots fight for climate action.
In his speech at the executive order signing ceremony, Trump said “together, we’ll create millions of good American jobs, also so many energy jobs and really lead to unbelievable prosperity all throughout our country.” In pursuit of that goal, the executive order immediately removes, or rolls back, a number of Obama-era measures intended to lessen the effects of climate change. This includes some that would prepare the American economy and communities for the impacts of climate change, and even one measure that would have supported coal communities directly.
The executive order recklessly places our climate at risk, which means it also jeopardizes America’s food supplies, water supplies, economy, and national security. To add insult to injury, the order is unlikely to achieve the positive job growth President Trump promises.
Trump has shifted the climate and economic burden of America’s fossil-fuel industry back onto the shoulders of Americans and, particularly, coal communities. He did so in the name of bolstering the coal and, ironically, natural gas industries and bringing back the jobs those industries provide. Despite the political rhetoric, which vociferously blamed climate policies for the decline of coal, economists agree that the biggest killer of coal jobs is actually mechanical automation in coal mines and cheap, abundant, cleaner-burning natural gas. The “drill baby drill” fracking movement flooded the market with a glut of natural gas, depressed natural gas prices, and helped shift global markets away from coal and toward natural gas, reducing the number of jobs in both industries in the process.
Overall, the order places American coal communities at a disadvantage. Leasing fees and royalty payments are a relatively small item on a coal company’s balance sheet and are certainly not the factors breaking the back of the coal industry. But to the rural states and small towns whose economies are built on coal, royalty and leasing fee revenues can make all the difference. According to the Utah BLM, the five coal mines operating on federal land in Utah in 2016 paid approximately $18 million combined in royalties, fees, and bonuses to the state of Utah and the communities in which they operate. For context, Emery County, which hosts two of the mines, had an annual budget of $13.4 million in 2016.
The Colorado Plateau will feel Trump’s false promises acutely, especially the end of the temporary ban on new coal leases, something that would have actually helped coal communities. That’s because the moratorium was carefully crafted to prevent the holdup of current coal operations, which had plenty of coal supply to last them through the moratorium, while allowing the federal government to ensure that, under any new leases, coal companies adequately compensated states and communities.
The Federal Coal Program, which dictates what coal companies pay taxpayers for the publicly owned coal they mine and sell, was last updated under the Reagan administration. About half of the royalties and fees coal companies pay to mine publicly owned coal goes back to the states where the coal was mined. That money can be used for everything from infrastructure to public education to job training. But many coal leases have actually sold for less than a dollar per acre, plus a mere $3 per acre in annual rental fees. Coal companies have taken advantage of loopholes in the coal program to pay lower royalties to taxpayers. When a new coal lease lasts for 20 years, it’s in the public interest to ensure leaseholders are truly being fair to the public before locking it in for two decades.
By reverting back to the status quo, the order ensures that coal communities will not get a fair return on the coal mined on public land. Those are lost dollars that coal communities could use to prepare their economies for the climate and economic challenges the coal industry will ultimately leave in its wake. By ignoring global market realities and the advice of 97 percent of the world’s climate scientists, Trump’s executive order amounts to a false promise and a crushing blow to Americans.
On the Colorado Plateau, we exist in a delicate balance between Mother Nature and human innovation. We have access to our own unique supply of natural resources, and our water-limited, wildfire and flood-prone landscapes mean climate change will have particular implications for us. We have a lot to lose from Trump’s order, which will now allow several plateau coal mines, including a mine expansion onto federal land near Bryce Canyon National Park, to move forward without any consideration of what its climate-damaging emissions will cost us. Neither will there be a dedicated assessment of whether the company, Alton Coal Development, is paying Utah taxpayers a fair price for the public resource it’s extracting.
Coal communities across the plateau, including Alton, Utah, may temporarily see a number of coal jobs continue as some coal-fired power plants and mines gain a few extra years of life. But the reality of increased automation at mines and a world looking for lower-carbon, cheaper energy solutions all but guarantees coal’s ultimate demise. Colorado Plateau communities that look to the coal industry to support their families have only seen Trump kick the can a few more years down the road while doing nothing to help them prepare and build economic and infrastructural resilience in the face of the inevitable.
This sort of backward, anti-science, high-consequence policymaking takes America in the wrong direction. So what do we do now?
The Trust is already in court on behalf of our members to ensure that new Colorado Plateau coal mines don’t turn a short-term profit at the long-term expense of the communities and landscapes in which they operate. We will continue to pursue new opportunities to engage on behalf of the public interest.
Some of the items in President Trump’s executive order, namely finalized federal agency rules like the Clean Power Plan, cannot be single-handedly wiped off the table. Revising or revoking them will require the same long public-engagement process that led to their creation. The Trust will be there to ensure that the best science is brought to the table. We’ll help you get involved by issuing action alerts to help you navigate the process.
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Communities faced with the inevitable and difficult transition away from a coal-based economy deserve help. Through our public outreach, we’re working to unveil the economic and environmental truths behind President Trump’s false promises and empower communities to speak up for themselves in the face of an administration that isn’t working for them. We’re also working to elevate successful examples and strategies for navigating the difficult transition away from coal to keep American climate action pointed in the right direction.
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