The “war on coal” may be over, as Vice President Mike Pence declared this past week, but it would be a costly mistake for Indiana’s elected leaders to ignore the nation’s ongoing move toward cleaner, more sustainable energy sources.
The Trump administration announced that it will end Obama-era regulations that increased penalties for burning coal to produce electricity, both as a way to reduce pollution and as a means to address climate change.
But it’s unlikely that the change in policy will actually alter the nation’s move away from coal.
In the past six years, more than 25,000 of the nation’s coal mining jobs — about 28 percent — have been lost. That’s occurred for the most part not because of federal regulations, but because of something more powerful: the free market.
The surge in shale gas extraction has pushed down prices and made it the preferred energy source for generating electricity. That is unlikely to change in the foreseeable future. Jobs also have been on a decline for the past five decades because automated extraction required fewer miners.
Although Indiana has joined the rest of the nation in moving away from coal, it has done so at a much slower pace than most other states. And we’ve paid for that slowness in a way even more important than money: with our health.
Southwest Indiana is home to seven coal-fired power plants, four of which are among the worst polluters in the nation. Last year, the Center for Public Integrity found that in 2014, more pollution was pumped into the air in a 30-mile radius around Evansville than near any other city in the nation.
It’s not by coincidence that Vanderburgh County, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has a lower life expectancy and a higher rate of adults with fair-to-poor health than similar counties around the nation.
And the harm to Hoosiers’ health isn’t confined to Southern Indiana, as the pollution spreads across much of the state and to neighboring states, including Kentucky, where Henderson sits just across the Ohio River from Evansville.
Speeding up the move away from coal also is important for our economy. As the number of jobs in the coal industry has declined, employment in the clean energy sector has grown rapidly and should continue to do so.
Two questions then for Indiana’s leaders: Do you want the state’s economy to be tied to the future or the past? Do you want to take a critical step toward improving health by reducing our reliance on coal?
The answers should be obvious.