Buried in an otherwise
humdrum jobs report for March was the jaw-dropping pronouncement by the Labor
Department that mining jobs in America were up by 11,000 in March. Since the
low point in October 2016 and following years of painful layoffs in the mining
industry, the mining sector has added 35,000 jobs.
What a
turnaround. It comes at a time when liberals have been
saying that Donald Trump has been lying to the American people when he has said
that he can bring coal jobs back. Well, so far he has brought them back.
There’s more
good news for the coal industry. Earlier this month, Peabody Coal — America’s
largest coal producer — moved out of bankruptcy, and its stock is actively
trading again. Its market cap had sunk by almost 90 percent, during the Obama
years. Arch Coal is also out of bankruptcy.
It turns out
that elections do have consequences, after all. Regime change in
Washington has brought King Coal back to life since late 2016 when coal
production had fallen by almost half from its peak. The Obama administration
and its allies like the Sierra Club tried to kill coal, because of their
hyper-obsession with global warming. The Trump administration pledged to coal
miners in small towns across America in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West
Virginia and Wyoming that he would be a friend to American coal and fossil
fuels.
As promised,
Trump has lifted the so-called Clean Power Plant regulations and several other
EPA rules that were intentionally designed to kill coal jobs (and thousands
more in related industries like trucking and steel) and shutter coal plants,
which they accomplished with ruthless precision. Hillary had promised her green
allies that she would finish off every last coal mining job in America.
The coal miners
weren’t too happy about this, and her arrogant disregard for a leading American
industry that hires tens of thousands of union workers contributed to her
losses in almost all the coal states — many of which were once reliably Democratic.
America was
built on cheap and abundant coal. Fossil fuels powered the U.S. into the
industrial age and replaced inefficient windmills and woodburning as the
primary sources of electricity. America currently has access to 500 years’
worth of coal — far more than any other nation. Even despite the last decade’s
war on coal during the Obama years, the U.S. still derives about one third of
our power from coal — second only to natural gas.
Coal is
indispensable today, even if renewable “green” energy starts to catch on,
because wind and solar power are only viable with coal burning power plants as
a backup for when the wind doesn’t blow and the sun doesn’t shine. Without
coal, green energy means rolling blackouts across America.
Liberals have
argued that coal could never make a comeback because of cheap natural gas.
Clearly, the shale gas revolution with prices falling from $10 to $3 per
million cubic feet has hurt coal producers.
But economic
necessity is the mother of invention, and coal companies like Peabody have
figured out how to become far more efficient in their production. What’s
more, clean coal is here. Emissions from coal plants of lead, sulfur,
carbon monoxide, and other air pollutants have fallen by more than half and, in
some cases, by 90 percent in recent decades.
The climate
change industrial complex pontificates that the U.S. has to stop using coal to
save the planet. But even if the U.S. cut our own coal production to zero,
China and India are building hundreds of coal plants. By not suspending American coal production, we are merely
transferring jobs from the U.S. Do liberals care more about jobs in India and
China than in America?
Renewable energy
is at best one or two decades away from being a major energy source for the
world, so until that happens, coal and natural gas will compete as low-priced
and super-abundant, domestically produced energy sources for 21st century
America. Nuclear power will hopefully continue to play an important role,
too. Meanwhile, for all the talk of the increase in wind and solar industries,
they still account for less than 5 percent of our energy. Almost 70 percent
comes from natural gas and coal.
Coal isn’t dead in America. It is unleashed. As a Washington
Times editorial put
it very well recently, “The left gave up on the 100,000 coal workers in America
more than a decade ago. Donald Trump has not.” Remember this the next time
Elizabeth Warren or Nancy Pelosi lecture us about how much they care about the
working class in America.
Stephen
Moore is an economic consultant with Freedom Works and co-author of Fueling Freedom: Exposing the Mad War Against Energy.
