Donald Trump has been preying on miners from the beginning of his campaign. He’s used them as props. He’s played on their pride and desperation. And he’s used the idea that he’s helping miners to allow miner operators to use forms of mining that require fewer workers.
All that lying is having an effect. That effect comes in the form of lives that are being ruined, not just now, but for the future.
When Mike Sylvester entered a career training center earlier this year in southwestern Pennsylvania, he found more than one hundred federally funded courses covering everything from computer programming to nursing.
He settled instead on something familiar: a coal mining course.
"I think there is a coal comeback,” said the 33-year-old son of a miner.
Despite broad consensus about coal's bleak future, a years-long effort to diversify the economy of this hard-hit region away from mining is stumbling, with Obama-era jobs retraining classes undersubscribed and future programs at risk under President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget.
Earlier this week, Donald Trump pressed another big lie about coal.
Donald J Trump
U.S. COAL PRODUCTION
Up 7.8% past year. Down 31.5% last 10 years. #EndingWarOnCoal
There are lies, damn lies, statistics, and this—an intentional lie that is hurting everyone.
In 2010, US coal production was 1.1 billion tons. Production fluctuated over the next five years, but in 2015 it dropped sharply to 897 million tons. It dropped again in 2016 to 728 million tons. That’s actually a bit more than the 31 percent drop Trump indicated.
However, the biggest reason for the abrupt drop in 2016 wasn’t just the idling of many coal plants through a changeover to natural gas, it was the bankruptcy of the nation’s two largest coal producers. With both Peabody Energy and Arch Coal operating under Chapter 11, the biggest mines in the world were running at reduced rates. Add to that the warmest winter in history, and the demand for coal was reduced.
So what is the gain that Trump is reporting? The US Energy Information Association reported production in the second quarter earlier this month.
What the numbers show is that the first half of 2016 produced 334 million tons. The first half of 2017 produced 384 million tons. That does seem to represent something of a recovery … though again, not quite matching Trump’s numbers. But … hang on a second.
Look at it instead as a series of quarters
Trump’s “up 7.8 percent” actually represents a continued downward trend. Production is only up if compared to the historically low production in the first two quarters of 2016. Compared to the last two quarters, production under Trump has been down … and then down some more. In fact, production dropped by 2.3 percent in just the last quarter.
There is no coal comeback. And there are very good reasons why there won’t be, no matter what Trump does.
By continuing to press this lie, Trump is damaging the health of Americans who live downstream from new mountaintop operations, increasing the damage from climate change by destroying the Clean Power Plan, and he’s directly crushing the lives of the people who trust him most.
Trump has promised to revive coal by rolling back environmental regulations and moved to repeal Obama-era curbs on carbon emissions from power plants.
"I have a lot of faith in President Trump," Sylvester said.
But hundreds of coal-fired plants have closed in recent years, and cheap natural gas continues to erode domestic demand. The Appalachian region has lost about 33,500 mining jobs since 2011, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission.
Although there have been small gains in coal output and hiring this year, driven by foreign demand, production levels remain near lows hit in 1978.
Those 1978 production levels were hit when most mining was still in the east, and the industry employed more than 200,000 miners. Now most of the production comes from enormous western surface mines, and even a sharp increase in demand would not put miners like the ones Trump has sold on his coal dream back to work.