Tom Saler

Special to the Journal Sentinel

When President Donald Trump claimed that extending the life of the American coal industry would unleash “unbelievable” prosperity, he was only half right.

If the once powerful King Coal contributed even a pittance toward the president’s goal of doubling the nation’s economic growth rate, it would indeed be unbelievable.

As with the broader manufacturing sector, the loss of coal mining jobs over the last half-century owes more to automation than to government policy. A tripling in mine productivity partially explains why coal output has increased by 20% since 1980 while mine employment has fallen by 75% over that same period.

Despite Trump’s executive order, which averts the closure of older mines and reopens federal land for coal production, automation will continue to nibble away at industry jobs.

Claims that the U.S. government is conducting a “war on coal” are similarly bogus. According to the nonpartisan Taxpayers for Common Sense, federal subsidies and tax breaks granted the coal industry since 1950 amount to $70 billion. A rule adopted last year that stopped mining companies from dumping waste into rivers and streams was killed by Trump.

Besides automation, coal has been affected by a market preference for natural gas and renewables. That shift has little to do with regulation and everything to do with economics.

From the American Revolution until shortly after the Civil War, all of the country’s energy production was generated from renewable sources (wood and water). The dominance of coal began in the late 1800s and lasted for nearly a century; as recently as 1985, more than half of U.S. electricity generation was from coal. Today, coal’s market share is less than one-third.

Propping up the coal industry is another attempt to reclaim a past that cannot be reclaimed. And in the case of coal-fired energy production, it’s difficult to imagine why anyone would want it to be reclaimed.

Coal miners themselves should be among those looking to move on.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 78,196 miners have died from pneumoconiosis — also known as black lung disease — since the government began collecting data in 1969. The actual numbers are far worse. A recent investigation by NPR determined that incidents of black lung across Appalachia could be 10 times higher than what federal regulators have reported.

The Black Lung Disability Trust Fund is nearly $6 billion in the hole, which could put taxpayers on the hook for future claims. A repeal of the Affordable Care Act would deprive some mine workers of the medical care needed to live more comfortably with an incurable disease.

Even those not working in the mines suffer its ill effects.

Emissions from coal-fired power plants have been estimated to cause more than 10,000 premature deaths each year at a cost of $100 billion. A 2009 report from the Physicians for Social Responsibility found that “Coal pollutants affect all major body organs and contribute to four of the five leading causes of mortality in the U.S.: heart disease, cancer, stroke, and chronic respiratory diseases.”

Though so-called clean coal plants could capture a meaningful amount of carbon emissions, they are still dirtier than other energy sources and do not remove toxins that cause serious human health problems. Neither can the hugely expensive (and thus economically uncompetitive) carbon capture and sequestration plants guarantee that the carbon dioxide gases stored underground won’t escape, nor eliminate the need to blow off mountain tops to access the coal.

But back to the question of whether abandoning environmental restrictions on coal will trigger renewed prosperity.

As noted, coal industry jobs should continue to decline, eliminating the economic benefit from consumer spending in coal country. More broadly, the share of disposable household income that Americans spend on energy already has dropped from 8% in 1980 to 5% today, or a full percentage point lower than during the economic boom of the 1960s.

In the early 1970s, I recall flying into New York on a cloudless fall afternoon. Upon nearing Manhattan, I expected to get a bird’s-eye view of famous skyscrapers and other historic landmarks. What I got were glimpses of buildings poking through dense smog.

Whatever was going on down there, it was not great.

Tom Saler is an author and freelance financial journalist in Madison. He can be reached at tomsaler.com.