To the editor,
I am commenting on a column that appears on your website on June 17 by Gene Lyons: “America gains nothing from denying global warming.”
In his criticism of President Trump’s decision to get out of the Paris Agreement on climate change, Gene Lyons dismisses the coal industry as “dirty” and describes the unemployment of coal miners as inevitable by concluding: “it’s going to happen anyway.”
This assessment of the coal mining industry is ill-informed; the mining industry is responsible for the employment of 297,000, which, compared to the industry in 2005, has increased employment by roughly 30,000. The coal mining industry is clearly still growing.
In states that rely on coal powered electricity, the cost of electricity is 30 percent less then states that rely on other forms of electricity. Coal mining benefits citizens living in these states by lowering their cost of living.
Trying to close down the industry due to exaggerated climate change concerns makes no sense.
