

Kevin Drumm at Mother Jones takes a look at the increased death rates expected from the Trump administration’s rollback of air standards for coal-burning power plants and finds Arkansas will be one of the big losers.

Depending on whose estimate you trust and how far out you’re willing to look, the Trump plan will kill somewhere between 200-1,400 extra people per year compared to the Obama Clean Power Plan, with the averages shown in the chart above. Of course, there’s good news and bad news in all this. Out West, where we don’t use much coal, the effect will be negligible. On the other hand, if you live in Missouri, Arkansas, West Virginia, or western Pennsylvania, things don’t look so rosy. In those places, EPA estimates an extra 10-20 deaths per million people each year:

The elevated death rate shown in the map happens to track roughly on a line between the coal-burning plant at White Bluff and the coal-burning plant in Independence County.

News of more deaths in Arkansas was effectively cheered earlier this week by Attorney General Leslie Rutledge:

“I am thrilled the Trump administration kept its word to the American people by throwing out the so-called ‘Clean Power Plan.’ The President and the Environmental Protection Agency have restored – through the “Affordable Clean Energy” rule – the rule of law, returned power to the states and added needed certainty to our energy industry – both our regulators and consumers. “This day was only possible because of a bipartisan collection of state attorneys general who stood up to the Obama administration and filed repeated legal challenges to the blatant overreach of executive power. And, together, we won an historic stay from the Supreme Court of the United States – stopping the so-called ‘Clean Power Plan.'”

Certain death, too. You go girl.