Coal and Methane Can Never Be Great Again
Presidential decrees won’t turn the tide for dirty fuels.
An industry in slow decline.
Photographer: Spencer Platt/Getty Images North AmericaClimate change may be inevitable, but White House efforts to make it happen faster are not.
President Donald Trump took office promising to roll back environmental regulations and bolster the coal industry, in keeping with his dream of American “energy dominance” and general skepticism of man-made global warming. One big problem is that coal demand just keeps sinking, in defiance of the president’s wishes. And a slew of new industry reports suggests coal’s demise is global and irreversible, note Nathaniel Bullard and David Fickling. Only in India is coal-burning expected to hold up for a while, but that probably won’t offset trends in the rest of the world. No wonder big miners such as BHP Group are fleeing the coal business.