Trump Administration’s Elimination Of Obama Coal Regulation Could Cause Up To 1,400 More Deaths Per Year

The administration of President Donald Trump rolled back another rule for pollution control and announced an overhaul of federal pollution restrictions that could lead into as many as 1,400 premature deaths annually by 2013, according to administration’s analysis.

The proposal to end the “war on coal,” as Trump calls it, is suppose to weaken the rules on coal-burning plants and follows a plan to allow cars to emit more pollution. But the new rules could cause the death of thousands through an increase of extremely fine particles that are linked to heart and lung diseases, upper respiratory problems and bronchitis.

The Environmental Protection Agency, which crafted the existing rules that were adopted by the administration of former President Barack Obama, estimated the prevention of between 1,500 and 3,600 premature death per year by 2030 and also a reduction of the number of school days missed by 180,000 each year. The Obama regulations were made to fight the global warming by forcing utilities to switch to greener power sources. The Trump administration has made the elimination of those rules to a centerpiece of its strategy.

“We love clean, beautiful West Virginia coal,” Trump said at a political rally Tuesday evening in West Virginia, the heart of coal country. “And you know, that’s indestructible stuff. In times of war, in times of conflict, you can blow up those windmills, they fall down real quick. You can blow up pipelines, they go like this,” he said. “You can do a lot of things to those solar panels, but you know what you can’t hurt? Coal.”

To date, the Trump administration has sought to reverse more than 70 environmental rules, according to a New York Times analysis, based on research from Harvard Law School’s Environmental Regulation Rollback Tracker, Columbia Law School’s Climate Tracker and other sources. Rules targeted for reversal so far include key Obama-era efforts to curb planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions, as well as broader air and water pollution controls and protections for threatened animals and habitats.

Article by Steven Abendroth