Another day, another deadly move that defies logic, morality and economic common sense.
Last week, the Trump administration granted nearly 70 coal-fired power plants a two-year exemption from the Mercury and Air Toxics Standards. The move allows them to emit increased levels of hazardous pollutants like mercury, arsenic and lead.
Mercury is a potent neurotoxin, particularly harmful to children and pregnant women, that causes developmental disorders and other severe health issues. The standards established to limit such emissions have been instrumental in reducing these toxins in our environment. Once all coal plants were brought into compliance, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimated the standards would prevent 11,000 premature deaths, 4,700 heart attacks and 130,000 asthma attacks each year.
By rolling back the most recent update to those protections, the administration is senselessly prioritizing outdated, polluting energy sources over the well-being of American communities — maybe your community. The exempted power plants and coal-burning units are in every region of the country — from Arizona to Pennsylvania, Wyoming to Alabama, from the Dakotas down to Texas, and in Illinois, Indiana, Missouri and throughout the Midwest.
This decision is not only a public health concern but also an economic misstep. The energy market has been shifting away from coal for years, with cleaner and more cost-effective alternatives like renewables taking the lead. Attempting to revive the coal industry through deregulation ignores market trends and the growing demand for sustainable energy solutions.
The administration’s shallow argument that this is about energy security, and even national security, does not pass the laugh test. True energy security lies in diversifying our energy sources and investing in resilient, clean technologies — not in propping up an industry in its death throes that if revived would only poison and cause the actual deaths of Americans by the tens of thousands.
Communities across the nation, especially those near these coal plants, will bear the brunt of increased pollution. This reckless regulatory rollback is just one of the latest moves in this administration’s efforts to undermine decades of progress in environmental and health protections.
So how do we hold our leaders accountable and pursue policies that prioritize the health of our people and our planet? One way is to work with the organizations and community groups pushing tirelessly to move us towards a cleaner, healthier future.
Civil society groups — those non-governmental organizations, associations and institutions that advocate and fight for the causes Americans care about — play not just a vital role in our democracy, but a vital role in protecting our interests, our health, and even our lives.
Take the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal Campaign as one example. A single campaign. Since 2010, that campaign has helped retire more than 380 coal-fired power plants. The energy from those plants has been and remains easily replaceable by other sources. And by reducing the burning of that dirtiest of dirty fossil fuels, we saved American lives and entire communities.
In fact, the retirement of all that coal burning has now saved nearly 63,000 lives. And it has saved Americans $29 billion in health care costs. That is due to all the heart attacks, cancer, asthma attacks and other lung disease, and heavy metal poisoning that the closure of these plants stopped in American communities from coast to coast.
So why on earth would we backslide? Why would we expose millions more Americans — especially the young children most at risk — to the irreversible effects of brain-damaging neurotoxins like mercury? Or developing fetuses to the risk of the birth defects these toxins cause?
These are the questions we need to be asking. But even as they make our air less safe, don’t hold your own breath waiting for an honest answer from this administration — because it doesn’t exist.
Ben Jealous is executive director of the Sierra Club and a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania.
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