Coal nation is celebrating Donald Trump's victory. Help for Trump was robust from Appalachia to Wyoming, and now that he has been elected, folks have excessive hopes about what he, and the Republican Congress, can do to show round coal's fortunes.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
Coal nation is celebrating Donald Trump's victory. Help for Trump was robust on Tuesday from Appalachia to Wyoming. Now that Trump has been elected, individuals are ready for him to reverse coal's current downturn. So can he? For Inside Power, Wyoming Public Radio's Stephanie Joyce experiences.
STEPHANIE JOYCE, BYLINE: Jeremy Murphy listened to the election outcomes on the radio in his pickup truck as he labored the in a single day shift on the nation's largest coal mine in Wyoming's Powder River Basin. Murphy says everybody on the mine was tuned in on their very own truck radios, listening for the outcomes.
JEREMY MURPHY: The 2-way radios at work have been actually quiet - actually, actually quiet.
JOYCE: However when it turned clear Trump was going to win, Murphy cheered. He is initially from Kentucky however moved to Wyoming after being laid off from his coal mining job there. He fearful Clinton presidency would imply having to maneuver once more.
MURPHY: We will not stay in Wright, Wyo., in a declining coal market worse than what it has been - no person can. All people right here would personal homes in a ghost city.
JOYCE: It has been a tough marketplace for coal just lately. U.S. manufacturing is down 20 % over the identical time final 12 months, and 1000's of miners have been laid off. Like many right here, Murphy has religion that Trump can reverse these traits by rolling again environmental laws.
Louise Carter-King is the mayor of Gillette, a city within the coronary heart of Wyoming's coal nation. She agrees.
LOUISE CARTER-KING: I believe he can realistically inform the EPA to again off.
JOYCE: She needs Trump to kill President Obama's Clear Energy Plan which might've dramatically reduce emissions from coal-fired energy vegetation. Carter-King says she is not against local weather change laws.
CARTER-KING: However I believe the best way that Obama was doing it was simply heavy handed. And it simply did not make sense.
JOYCE: Killing laws just like the Clear Energy Plan is the principle means Trump might assist the coal business. However will it assist? I posed that query to College of Wyoming economist Rob Godby.
ROB GODBY: Proper, so the brief reply might be not a lot.
JOYCE: Coal's greatest downside lately has been pure fuel. Fracking has unleashed huge reserves of it, pushing down the worth and making it aggressive with coal for electrical energy technology for the primary time. And Trump has known as for elevated pure fuel drilling.
ROB GODBY: The inherent contradiction in his coverage is, you'll be able to't put all of the coal miners to work when you do not have excessive pure fuel costs.
JOYCE: In different phrases, if Trump needs to revive the coal business, he must shut down the pure fuel business. And that is not going to occur. The vitality sector is pushed by markets. And Godby says these are laborious to affect.
ROB GODBY: President Obama discovered it is laborious to vary vitality coverage. President Bush discovered it is laborious to vary vitality coverage. And President Trump goes to seek out out that it is laborious to vary vitality coverage.
JOYCE: However for folks like Jeremy Murphy, the coal miner, Trump's guarantees are their final finest hope. And if he fails to ship...
MURPHY: If he does not do what he says he'll do, , why are folks going to vote for Republicans once more?
JOYCE: The stakes could not be increased for each the miners and for Trump. For NPR Information, I am Stephanie Joyce in Laramie, Wyo.
Copyright © 2016 NPR. All rights reserved. Go to our web site phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional info.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by Verb8tm, Inc., an NPR contractor, and produced utilizing a proprietary transcription course of developed with NPR. This textual content might not be in its closing kind and could also be up to date or revised sooner or later. Accuracy and availability might fluctuate. The authoritative file of NPR's programming is the audio file.
No comments:
Post a Comment