Here, Breathe This Coal

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/11/opinion/coal-clean-power-plan-epa.html

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Most of climate change’s dangers remain far-off in the future, and almost anything in the future feels uncertain, even squishy. This uncertainty is a big reason that climate change is such a hard political problem to solve.

The Trump administration’s decision to repeal the Clean Power Plan — and promote coal use — is clearly bad for the planet’s far-off future, because it will aggravate climate change. But I think the most effective strategy for the opponents of repeal is to focus on the here and now. And unlike some anti-environmental policies, this one will begin to harm Americans very quickly.

Coal plants release a stew of pollutants, including mercury (which damages children’s brains) and particulate matter (which includes bits of unburned coal small enough for people to inhale). These bits of coal cause asthma, strokes, lung damage and heart attacks. Worldwide, particulate matter is the seventh-largest cause of avoidable deaths.

Scott Pruitt, President Trump’s E.P.A. director, has a long record of running government agencies on behalf of the energy industry. First in Oklahoma and now in Washington, he’s enacted policies to increase industry profits, no matter the health consequences.

Buried deep in the proposed rule change that the E.P.A. released yesterday, the organization acknowledges part of the damage it is doing: “Some of the benefits of reducing these pollutants would have accrued to children.” Indeed. But in Pruitt’s E.P.A., keeping children from breathing coal doesn’t seem to be a priority.

On this subject, Richard Revesz and Jack Lienke have written an op-ed in The Times carefully detailing how the E.P.A. has fudged the economic numbers to justify its policy. Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund has written a pithy series of tweets. The Editorial Board also addresses the subject today.

In The Times. “It’s also hard to reconcile ESPN’s decision to suspend Jemele Hill for not quite calling for a boycott with the outspokenness that ESPN prizes in anchors who are not black women, who say things much more offensive and only get a slap on the wrist,” argues Kashana Cauley, a television writer.