Trump, Killing Us All With Coal

CRAZY AS IT MAY SEEM, for Trump, it isn't. For Trump, crazy is the norm. He plans to spend half a billion dollars to "reinvigorate" the coal industry. And, in an unintentionally but related move, Trump canceled federal funding for climate change research and mitigation. Precisely where he plans to get the money for the coal industry, and how he plans to allcoate it, remains unclear. Maybe Congress will appropriate it, and Trump will redistribute it among the various coal companies, to give them an economic boost, to upgrade facilites, pay CEOs more, whatever. The coal industry, as everybody except Trump seems to know, is already dying a natural death, according to the time tested fundamental principles of supply and demand free market capitalism. You'd think Trump would recognize and appreciate that, and leave well enough alone. But no, not Trump. Natural gas is pricing coal out of the market, as are other energy sources, especially wind and solar energy. Using tax payer money to assist a naturally dying industry is pure socialism of the Republican kind, the kind that does not work. Capitalism will kill coal; simply let it die. Trump's chaotic ill considered policy simultaneously subsidizes the coal industry and eliminates funding to research and mitigate climate change, a perfect recipe for the eventual extinction of all life on Earth, in effect, planetary suicide, courtesy homo sapiens. At the precise moment when the fate of not only humanity but all life on Earth hangs in the balance amid rising temperatures globally, Trump actively facilitates this looming disaster by simultaneously dumping huge amounts of carbon into the atmosphere, while ignoring or accepting the disatrous consequences. "Bringing back coal" is an idiotic idea, from both the liberal and the conservative point of view. For the environmental "wacko" libs, as Rush Limbaugh used to call them, burning coal, or any other "fossil fuel" means adding still more carbon to an ecosystem already overburdened with it, carbon which causes increased heat absorption, globally warming, climate change, and, ultimately, human extinction. It seems to make sense, if you thinking about it, because it does. Its simple scientific fact. Anyone who has studied chemistry knows and understands this;unfortunately, much of teh general population has not studied chemistry, enough to fill the ranks of a massive climate change denial community, namely, conservatives. To conservatives, bringing back coal defies capitalistcic principles; conservatives simply seem unwilling to accpet the reality of the cost effecicncy of natural gas, and the ultimate wordwide use of wind and solar energy, accpmpanied perhaps by nuclear and geothermal energy. Trump's insane pro carbon anti-environmental energy policy, fully embraced and supported by conservatives, is a perfect prescription for climate disaster and humn extinction. This is the most egregious aspect of Trump's criminality. Investors and workers in the coal industry will be fine, as they move into other investments and jobs. Meanwhile, climate change is advancing at an alarming rate,far faster than scientists had ever thought it would. We simply cannot afford energy policy to be controlled by conservatives who favor continued use of fossil fuels. Fossil fuels have already done far too much damage, and must be phased out, fast. Our very survival depends on it.