WHO DIED and made us Jon Stewart? It seems like all we’ve done since the beginning of the year is critique other media sources: The LA Times and its finger-wagging about abortion. The Washington Post’s clickbait. Red-faced radio shock jocks. What are we, the Columbia Journalism Review?
A wise old editor once told us to take on hard subjects and never go after the opposition’s easiest arguments. But what to do when those on the port side of American politics and the media, but we repeat ourselves, keep serving up hanging curves? Maybe we’ve become conditioned to pulling the trigger on those pitches. It’s so sweet watching them go over the fence.
Last week we saw a CNN report about the number of coal plants closing in the United States. It seems that more have closed in the first two years of the Trump administration than closed during the whole first Obama term. For those of us who actually go outdoors and breathe the outside air, this would seem good news.
The U.S. Energy Information Administration—yes, it’s a thing—says coal consumption in the United States fell 4 percent last year. If nobody’s fudged on the math, that could mean the lowest level since 1979. Coincidentally, that was the year The China Syndrome came out. Also, in what can only be described as a public relations coup of the first order, 12 days after that movie hit theaters, the accident at Three Mile Island gripped the nation. Producers of the movie couldn’t have had better timing if they’d wished upon a star.
Even those who are skeptics of man-made global warming—what’s it called now? climate change?—can’t be fans of ash-belching pollution machines called coal plants. Some of us don’t much like the idea of all that pollution being pumped over our duck blinds and tomato gardens.
So the latest reports should be good news all around: Starbucks-sipping hipsters with their man buns get a reduction in the number of coal plants causing global warming, and beer-swilling rednecks leaning on their guns and religion get cleaner air around their deer stands. The headline should be: Good news, everybody!
Of course, that wouldn’t reflect on President Trump in the worst way. Rewrite!
CNN did indeed report that natural gas and renewable energy sources like wind and solar are pushing coal for more market share. Then went in search of the shuttered coal plants and the people who once worked there.
(You can find the story here: https:// www.cnn.com/2019/01/07/politics/ pennsylvania-coal-plantsweir-wxc/index.html)
You’ll remember that President Trump, when he was Candidate Trump, toured coal country and promised to keep coal miners in jobs. The free market is marching by that promise. Somehow, the president should be blamed.
Right next to a picture with a reassuring cutline—“Energy plants are increasingly powered by cheaper and cleaner alternatives to coal”—is a comment from a miner and local pol who bemoans coal’s demise, saying efforts to bring natural gas investors to his part of Pennsylvania “won’t bring back coal as king.”
Today, CNN considers that unfortunate.
So where are the comments from scientists who think that fewer coal plants are better for the nation and planet? Actually, in the last few paragraphs, the writers included one climatologist from Penn State. He said: “I think there’s enough resilience in the [Earth’s] system that we can withstand one four-year term of Donald Trump. I’m not sure we can withstand two.”
Uh, why not? Would another term resulting in fewer coal plants be somehow unwithstandable? How does that work? The head swims. And it’s not the first time when CNN reports on this president.
Up next: When the border wall on our southern border is finally built, how the lack of arrests will affect border guards and their job security. Isn’t the president ashamed?
There’s got to be another term for Trump Derangement Syndrome when it becomes untreatable. Let’s hope it’s not as contagious as it appears on TV.