Opinion | Trump’s Promise to Bring Back Coal Jobs is Worse Than a Con

Originally posted on www.washingtonpost.com.

“We need to keep it open so we have jobs.” Those are the words of a retired miner, explaining why the local mining operation is so important to his community. But he wasn’t talking about a coal mine in Appalachia. He was referring to a local asbestos mine — in Russia.

Through the 1970s, the United States was one of the world’s top producers of asbestos, which is a set of naturally occurring silicate minerals. As evidence mounted that exposure to asbestos fibers can be deadly, the federal government began limiting its use in consumer and commercial products. Demand for asbestos declined, legal liabilities soared, and the last U.S. asbestos mine closed in 2002. Those jobs have gone overseas, to places such as Russia, China and Kazakhstan, where asbestos mining and production face few restrictions. Yet there has been no political clamor to put American asbestos miners back to work.

Now consider the coal industry. Pollution from coal-fired power plants kills about 7,500 Americans each year, according to the Clean Air Task Force, an environmental group. That number is down from 13,000 in 2010 for a simple reason: Two hundred and fifty-one of the nation’s 523 coal plants have since closed or are being phased out. This decline has been driven by a combination of two powerful forces: cheaper alternative fuels (such as natural gas and renewable energy) and rising consumer demand for cleaner energy that won’t pollute the air and water that communities breathe and drink.

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