A crucial EU standing committee vote to clean up Europe's toxic air is coming up on April 28th. If the new pollution limits are passed than even bigtime polluters (coal) Germany and Poland, would be forced to clean up their act. If the regulations are implemented the dirty coal industry will be forced to adopt the best available techniques to clean up the air pollution caused by burning coal. Every day in Europe, air pollution caused by coal causes the deaths of 63 people through pollution related diseases. By applying clean air technologies thousands of lives could be saved, deaths caused by dirty air could be reduced by 85%. So you would think this is pretty cut and dry but, the coal industry isn't pleased that legislation could be passed which would force them to clean up or shut down, so lobbyists are fighting this and once again we are faced with a possible outcome of profit over people.
So Europeans are fighting for clean air regulations here and on the other side of the pond, Trump's newest executive order begins the process of reversing the climate change policies put into effect by the Obama administration. He is putting an end to the war on coal and stepping up his gameplan on the war on breathable air. He has already proposed cutting E.P.A. funding by 2,6 billion dollars and laying off about a fifth of it's workforce. The Obama Clean Power Plan places limits on carbon emitted from existing power plants and would have forced hundreds to close. This plan was the product of years of debate and negotiation between industry and environmental groups, economists, and policymakers. Many activists felt that the end result was too weak. Trump’s executive order, is simply ignorant and arrogant. If the U.S. is to meet its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement, part of the world’s eleventh-hour efforts to avoid catastrophic climate change, the Clean Power Plan cannot be revoked. Repealing the C.P.P. will do little or nothing to help out-of-work coal miners. Robert Murray, the C.E.O. of Murray Energy, the country’s biggest private coal company, recently said that coal jobs weren’t going to come back in the numbers that Trump has promised. According to estimates of the E.P.A. the C.P.P. would help prevent as many as thirty-six hundred premature deaths, seventeen hundred heart attacks, ninety thousand asthma attacks among children, and three hundred thousand missed workdays and school days every year. So much cannot be said for Trump's plan, in fact the only people who would seem to benefit are actually who? Not miners, really, because the coal industry has become so obsolete that jobs won't really be created in any large number so I'm guessing the only people who really benefit from this craziness are a few people at the top of the industry, right? So if we win the battle here in Europe we can only hope that the battle still rages in the U.S. and that Trump will be foiled once again.
So Europeans are fighting for clean air regulations here and on the other side of the pond, Trump's newest executive order begins the process of reversing the climate change policies put into effect by the Obama administration. He is putting an end to the war on coal and stepping up his gameplan on the war on breathable air. He has already proposed cutting E.P.A. funding by 2,6 billion dollars and laying off about a fifth of it's workforce. The Obama Clean Power Plan places limits on carbon emitted from existing power plants and would have forced hundreds to close. This plan was the product of years of debate and negotiation between industry and environmental groups, economists, and policymakers. Many activists felt that the end result was too weak. Trump’s executive order, is simply ignorant and arrogant. If the U.S. is to meet its commitments under the Paris Climate Agreement, part of the world’s eleventh-hour efforts to avoid catastrophic climate change, the Clean Power Plan cannot be revoked. Repealing the C.P.P. will do little or nothing to help out-of-work coal miners. Robert Murray, the C.E.O. of Murray Energy, the country’s biggest private coal company, recently said that coal jobs weren’t going to come back in the numbers that Trump has promised. According to estimates of the E.P.A. the C.P.P. would help prevent as many as thirty-six hundred premature deaths, seventeen hundred heart attacks, ninety thousand asthma attacks among children, and three hundred thousand missed workdays and school days every year. So much cannot be said for Trump's plan, in fact the only people who would seem to benefit are actually who? Not miners, really, because the coal industry has become so obsolete that jobs won't really be created in any large number so I'm guessing the only people who really benefit from this craziness are a few people at the top of the industry, right? So if we win the battle here in Europe we can only hope that the battle still rages in the U.S. and that Trump will be foiled once again.
