E.P.A.’s Push for Coal Over Clean Energy

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

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To the Editor:

Re “E.P.A. Announces Bid to Roll Back Emissions Policy” (front page, Oct. 10):

The cheers of the Hazard, Ky., crowd listening to Scott Pruitt’s jettisoning of the Clean Power Plan struck me as a validation of behavioral economics, which explores how humans often make irrational economic decisions.

Richard Thaler may have just won a Nobel Prize for exploring this phenomenon, but Mr. Pruitt and his ilk have made a career out of exploiting it. They use emotional language such as “winners and losers” and “war on coal” to obscure what’s really going on, which is the coal industry extracting as much labor from people and coal from the environment as possible, leaving both the poorer for it.

The challenge is to put the principles of behavioral economics to work to ramp up the public support for policies boosting clean power, not coal.

It is now up to governors — like Andrew Cuomo in New York, Jerry Brown in California and John Hickenlooper in Colorado — to lead the nation on that path.

ELIZABETH POREBA, NEW YORK

To the Editor:

Scott Pruitt proclaimed the end of the “war on coal” on Monday. “No better place to make that announcement than Hazard, Ky.,” he added unironically.

VIVIAN DONALDSONSCOTTSDALE, ARIZ.

To the Editor:

Do Donald Trump and Scott Pruitt even realize that they are ceding leadership in the development of cleaner energy to China, now proceeding full speed with the deployment of solar panels and the development of hybrid and battery-driven cars?

In a few years, the United States government will lament the dominance of China’s green technology, perfected on its own home turf. In the meantime, American industries will have less incentive to innovate.

BEN MYERS, HARVARD, MASS.