The Trump administration's latest plan to prop up coal

The EPA is dedicated to unpicking Obama-era policies, even those that are not actually in force

Once upon a time, back when America was great, coal was king. Then came Barack Obama. He laid the once-mighty industry low through onerous regulation, especially the hated Clean Power Plan (CPP). On August 21st, President Donald Trump, before an appreciative crowd in Charleston, West Virginia, personally slew the offending policy. 

So the legend will go. In fact the CPP, a sweeping regulation issued by the Obama administration's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), has been bogged down in legal challenges and has never actually gone into effect. The woes of coal are due less to government interference in markets than the markets themselves. Natural gas is a cheaper and cleaner fuel, made abundantly available by the fracking boom. Renewables, such as wind and solar energy, are now economically viable alternatives. Mining itself has become more automated. Today's miners are three times as productive as those of 1980 - meaning fewer of them are needed. 

All the same, the Trump administration is committed to undoing the CPP - which sought to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from power plants by 32% from 2005 levels by 2030 - before it goes into effect. Its new proposal, dubbed the "Affordable Clean Energy" (ACE) rule, is much less ambitious because it would let states decide their emissions-reductions targets (including none at all). Its name is Orwellian. The EPA's own analysis shows that retail electricity prices would be reduced by a mere 0.1%-0.2% by 2035 - but that usage of coal, a pollution-belching fuel, would shoot up by anywhere between 7.4% and 9.5%. 

The costs, in terms of increased emissions, would be significant. Compared with 2005, America was emitting 14% less carbon by the end of 2016 thanks in part to its transition away from coal. It will continue on that trajectory. But whereas the CPP would have reduced emissions by a further 19% by 2030, ACE only musters a drop of 0.7-1.5%. Coal-fired power plants also produce a bevy noxious gases hazardous to human health. The CPP was expected to cut sulphur-dioxide and nitrogen-oxide emissions by more than 20%; the new plan will only reduce them by 1-2%. Similarly dismaying comparisons exist for mercury and fine particulate matter - which could result in 1,400 additional premature deaths per year by 2030. 

"It's revealing if you don't think about this as a climate policy, but as a coal-subsidization policy," says Joseph Goffman, executive director of the Harvard Environment and Energy Law Programme and an architect of the CPP. A leaked set of White House talking-points given to The Economist confirms this. Climate change and global warming - usually the professed reasons for carbon regulation - go unmentioned. "A diverse, reliable energy portfolio is essential to the president's goal of energy dominance," the document reads. "Energy dominance is good for America and good for the world." 

The new proposal is not great surprise. The administration has tried its utmost to relax regulations for extractive industries. It has delayed rules limiting discharges of heavy metals, like lead, mercury and arsenic, from power plants. The EPA has also loosened rules on the storage of coal ash, a by-product of mining which can leach toxic metals into streams. Rick Perry, the energy secretary, has proposed out-and-out subsidization of the coal industry, on the theory that it adds resilience to the power grid; an independent regulatory commission rejected that idea. Two important officials driving environmental policy have close links to the coal industry. Andrew Wheeler, the acting EPA administrator, is a former coal lobbyist; William Wehrum, who is in charge of the agency's clean-air office, was a lawyer for the coal industry. Where they will wind up after their turn in public office is anyone's guess. 

The Republican Party's concern for left-behind coal miners (and coal-mine operators) can give a false impression of the industry's importance, however. Just 53,000 Americans work in coal mining, according to the latest calculations from the Bureau of Labour Statistics - roughly 0.03% of the labour force. There are as many craft and fine artists as coal miners. The outsized importance of coal miners in the American imagination has much to do with romanticism. A job in the mines represented an opportunity for a man who might have little formal education to provide an excellent living for his family through brawn alone. Republican calls for a resurgence in these nostalgic jobs play well with a white working-class base - even if they are impossible to deliver. 

Finalizing regulation takes time. Like the CPP, the Trump administration's proposal will probably face lengthy lawsuits. Its cost-benefit analysis is particularly ripe for challenge. The proposed rule is unlikely to go into effect within two years. That means that Mr Trump would have to win re-election for his environmental agenda to be seen through. A greener president would probably seesaw back towards the CPP. But as Democrats and Republicans spend years shadow-boxing over the future of energy policy, climate change will continue unencumbered.