During President Trump’s first State of the Union Address, he reaffirmed the U.S. commitment to staying in the stone age of energy. “We have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal,” he said. A war between millions of concerned Americans, and a handful of coal miners. If we ignore the ridiculous existence of a clean coal unicorn, then has Trump actually ended the war on coal? The price of renewable energy continues to be the cheaper alternative. Solar and natural gas has been chosen by the great invisible hand of the free market, and it just so happens to be better for the environment. Trump has claimed to have restored the coal industry to its former glory, but the stats tell a different story. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, coal jobs have only experienced a small stall in their rapid decline over the past six years.
It looks like the war has already ended, and Trump is holed up in a coal-infested bunker while the rest of America has moved on. Why is Trump so obsessed with fighting a lost cause?
As Trump was campaigning for President, he fancied himself a “champion of the average American”. He wore a protective helmet and made a hilariously out of touch digging gesture, he invited coal miners to the White House to convince his supporters that he was doing something besides obsessively tweeting, and now he claims to have ended the war on coal without providing any measurable evidence to prove it. I would like to believe that he is just attempting to appear less like a silver spoon trust fund baby, and more of an average, hard-working American, but the truth appears to be much stupider.
Trump has claimed that Climate Change is nothing but a Chinese hoax. His appointed EPA director, Scott Pruitt, has been caught instructing his team to delete climate change data from the EPA website. Trump feels a cold breeze in December, and wonders how can Global Warming could be true if it is cold today? He believes he is more informed on the complex science of climate change than a consensus of scientists. Trump has decided to stick his fingers in his ear and hum the Fox and Friends theme song instead of listen to some of the most brilliant minds on the issue. This is not only an extremely dangerous leadership style, but also holds irreversible consequences for the next generations. Rising sea levels from melting polar ice will worsen the refugee crisis, the particles from burning coal creates horrid health issues for Americans involved in the industry, and coal is more expensive to mine and refine than the alternatives. The party of fiscal responsibility has abandoned their mantra of market choice, and has adopted a dangerous rhetoric of anti-intellectualism. Dear Leader will never admit to picking up a lost cause, and one man’s ego is more important than the future of the only planet we have.
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