Op-ed by Summer Lane | Photo: Alamy
At this year’s U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai (COP 28), U.S. Special Envoy John Kerry declared that America needed to move away from coal power plants.
RSBN reported that he announced America’s plans to join the Power Past Coal Alliance, which means that the United States would be transitioning out of coal-fueled power plants by phasing out existing plants and declining to build new ones.
According to Axios, Kerry reasoned, “There shouldn’t be any more coal-fired power plants permitted anywhere in the world. That’s how you can do something for health. And the reality is that we’re not doing it.”
41 percent of America’s coal production comes from Wyoming, home to the two largest coal mines in the country (North Antelope Rochelle and Black Thunder), according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).
There are also three main regions where the U.S. mines coal: the Appalachian coal region, the Interior coal region, and the Western coal region.
Last year, the EIA also reported that by 2029, nearly one-quarter of all operating U.S.-coal-fired generating capacity will be retired, representing “23% of the 200,568 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired capacity currently operating in the United States…”
While climate-change alarmists like Kerry inexplicably claim that transitioning away from coal-fired power plants will be better for the world’s health, they fail to address what it will do to American energy production.
The cold, hard truth
President Donald Trump, who is a staunch supporter of American energy independence, wrote this week: “Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrats, despite the lessons recently learned in Germany and numerous other places, want to shut down all U.S. COAL PLANTS.”
He called the elimination of U.S. coal plants “A USA DEATH WISH,” particularly in light of China’s no-holds-barred commitment to building a dominating coal-fueled energy grid. Per Reuters, a huge coal-fired power plant in Yulin, China, is set to open within a year, for example. The facility cost over $3 billion yuan to build, the outlet revealed.
In the United States, the Biden administration has set a 2035 goal of achieving “100 percent carbon free electricity,” emphasizing a pivot away from industries like coal power production and instead looking toward so-called “renewable” energy sources.
Unfortunately, the reality is that this push toward “sustainable” energy has destroyed common sense domestic energy production, driving the cost of living up and out of sight.
To put this in perspective, Biden’s catastrophic decision to kill the Keystone XL Pipeline at the beginning of his term in office resulted in the termination of up to 59,000 construction jobs, KFYR TV confirmed, based on a report from the U.S. Department of Energy.
That equated to a $3.1 billion economic impact – and that’s just one example of how the Biden administration has stubbornly chipped away at American energy independence and destroyed countless jobs.
By contrast, President Trump has vowed to “DRILL BABY DRILL,” noting that domestic energy production in America would quickly get inflation under control, something that he has described as a dangerous “country buster.”
Step by step, the Biden administration is taking aim at one pillar of American energy production after another, forcing the U.S. into a pattern of defeat, weakness, and, ultimately, foreign dependence on energy importation.
Trump vs. Biden on energy
Trump has a track record of working to protect the American coal industry. He directly moved to shield coal workers in states like Wyoming and West Virginia from anti-energy policies at the federal level.
According to PolitiFact, while in office, he signed an executive order designed to undo the damage of former President Obama’s Clean Power Plan (similar to Joe Biden’s zero-emission commitment) and pulled out of the disastrous Paris Climate Accord.
America is rapidly becoming increasingly dependent on foreign oil and energy despite the “liquid gold” right under the feet of U.S. citizens in their own country. The prospective dismantlement of the coal industry will not only displace and destroy thousands upon thousands of American jobs, but it will further drive energy costs and economic prices up to a level never seen before, all in the name of so-called sustainability and climate change.
“…The United States will be reduced to an impoverished, third-world [country],” Trump said earlier this year.
However, with a 2024 victory in the general election, Trump has vowed to turn things around and open up the energy industry in America to full capacity once again. “We will reclaim America’s destiny as the greatest energy superpower on the face of the Earth,” he declared in November.
American voters will face a choice next year: will they vote for the return of U.S. energy production and strength, or will they bow at the feet of the high priests of climate change alarmism? Will they choose energy independence or energy submission? Will they sacrifice the jobs of countless blue-collar working men and women in the name of “science?”
Only time will tell, but President Trump’s energy agenda will restore American sovereignty, while Biden’s agenda will smash it into a thousand pieces. President Trump will lower energy prices, while Biden will drive prices skyward.
As president again, Trump has also promised to cut all federal regulations on natural gas production, vowed to pull out of the Paris Climate Accords (again) and the Green New Deal, and pledged to hastily refill the critical Strategic Petroleum Reserve, which Biden promptly drained upon taking office, via RSBN.
When it comes to harnessing the full power of American energy, there is no better man for the job than President Donald J. Trump. American coal workers and others should keep that in mind when casting their ballots in November 2024.
