Cutting coal only hurts the US and won't stop climate change

To coal or not to coal?

Given the loud shrieks of climate change zealots, one would think that the world is going to end in a few years if we don’t give up coal entirely and immediately.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) famously claimed in 2019 that the world was going to end if we didn't do something drastic within 12 years. (Speaking of which, I would be very interested to see whether she is saving for retirement, given her public claims that the world is likely to end before she reaches it.)

President Trump (like most rational people) doesn’t agree that the sky is falling. This is why he signed an executive order aimed at revitalizing America’s coal industry, promising that the U.S. will be safe from the wayward winds of global politics that have sent electricity prices skyrocketing in other countries compared to our own.

This decision means only good things for America’s economy and national security. The main question is, what does this mean for climate change? I would argue that it means nothing, and I will explain myself here.

Contrary to what climate change deniers will tell you, there is no doubt that the world has gotten hotter and has been getting hotter at a much faster rate over the last 50 years or so. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to realize that that isn’t the best news.

However, the broad agreement on this point falls apart when you move on to the question of what will happen next. Specific predictions of dire and even modest consequences fail to pan out. The truth is, we aren’t that good at modeling the future when it comes to the climate.

The result is a religious fervor that has taken over from climate science. And that means, assuming the world doesn't spare us the consequences by just ending in 12 years, the zealots are causing us to make decisions that are very bad for our future prosperity. In 2011, 50 percent of U.S. electricity was generated from coal. Now it is down to 15 percent.

The Obama and Biden administrations worked to make it impossible to mine coal. Inevitably, coal production went down the tubes, as did the many, many communities that were decimated by these administrations' policies — something those administrations were quite proud of in some cases. Trump has promised to revitalize the industry and those devastated communities.

Why was coal targeted so intensely in the first place? Because it emits carbon dioxide, and twice as much of it as natural gas. And although carbon dioxide is not the worst of the greenhouse gases causing global warming, it comprises the bulk of them by volume at about 80 percent.

So we see the negative of burning coal, but what’s the positive? For one thing, it is a significantly cheaper energy source that is easy to store and transport. We also have an abundance of it in the U.S. that can power the country and free us from being subject to the whims of foreign energy producers.

Also, it is more reliable than renewables such as wind and solar. These only work when the wind is blowing and the sun is shining. Also, not enough attention is paid to the environmental damage involved in building, moving, and maintaining, and disposing of these renewables.

But for argument's sake, let’s just say we were to stop using coal and take the economic hit. Would it actually do any good when it comes to climate change? Because that is the only really good reason I can see for stopping the use of coal.

And the answer, it turns out, is no. Although the U.S. has decreased its carbon emissions by almost 16 percent over the past 20 years, China has increased its emissions by about 230 percent. China now emits 240 percent more carbon dioxide than the U.S. and is only increasing.

India’s emissions have increased by 300 percent since 2000. The rest of Asia (excluding China and India) have increased their emissions by 64 percent and exceed the U.S. Russia is on a similar trajectory. These countries show absolutely no sign of stopping, and together they emit five times more carbon dioxide than the U.S.

According to the original Paris Climate Accords, the U.S. was supposed to cut emissions to about 25 percent below the 2005 rate. At the rate China is going, it will cancel out any such U.S> reduction in just three years.

This means that, by abandoning coal, we have endangered our own national security, put tens of thousands of Americans out of work, decimated wonderful communities in the heartland, and given ourselves significantly more expensive energy, all for no global environmental benefit.

Add to this the fact that there are new carbon capture and sequestration technologies that can reduce coal emissions by as much as 90 percent. We probably should have been investing in that all along, instead of focusing our resources on reducing coal.

I understand the argument that we shouldn't use coal just because others are doing it. But if there are no benefits to dropping coal, why not focus instead on how to make it cleaner?

Liberty Vittert is a professor of data science at Washington University in St. Louis and the resident on-air statistician for NewsNation, a sister company of The Hill.