But on his first day in office, Donald Trump scrapped Biden’s clean energy and environmental programs, which he lambasted as woke, anti-American liberal hoaxes.
The 2022 cash injection came through the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), Biden’s landmark climate and infrastructure legislation, and was designed to help revitalize and strengthen former coal communities over the long haul.
It was the largest investment in Appalachia since the 1960s’ “war on poverty” under Lyndon Johnson.
but like many blue-collar regions is now part of the loyal Maga base who believed Trump when he pledged to resuscitate coal country and put American first.
Trump has won big in West Virginia in the past three general elections, securing every county in 2024 with an average of 70% of the vote – the highest percentage any party has won in the state’s history. His vote share was even larger in rural counties including Clay and Wayne, which Huntington straddles.
So you’d expect anger at Trump but you’d be wrong !
yet many of those interviewed by the Guardian blame Washington politics generally rather than Trump.
I heard that the clean coal movement was a massive scam, and there’s no scientific merit to it.
This has nothing whatsoever to do with clean coal.
Nothing has anything to do with clean coal because it doesn’t exist. Clean coal was a Republican talking point, but was turned into cleaning up coal dependant places. It means two different things to people on different sides.
Just one of hundreds of green washing marketing methods (aka lying).
Just like the term “natural gas”, which the industry has pushed so people don’t think it’s that bad because it’s natural. It’s methane gas from fossil fuel, which is actually like 80x more potent than carbon dioxide.
When it leaks. When it burns, it produces less pollution than things like coal or petrol.
Yes. But when you have highly pressurized gas, it leaks at every step of the pipeline from extraction, transmission, to end uses. Methane leaks are a huge problem.
Fair enough. I never saw much point to piping gas to residential neighborhoods but then I grew up in a place that electrified early because of abundant hydropower.
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