While campaigning in Columbus, Ohio, in March 2016, Hillary Clinton said something that she later cited as the comment she “regret[s] the most” from her presidential run.
Clinton announced that she would put coal miners and companies out of business if she became president. Her comments likely cost her significant support across the coal-mining states of Ohio, Kentucky, Wyoming, Montana and Pennsylvania.
In the end, it wasn’t Clinton who put the hurt on coal country but instead the rapidly declining costs of renewable energy, especially solar and wind, uber-cheap natural gas and an array of states and cities with ambitious climate change action plans requiring sharp reductions in carbon dioxide emissions.
Four years ago, the writing was on the wall: Saving coal would require disregarding the market and reversing the plans towards decarbonization.
Over the course of Donald Trump’s presidency, the U.S. has remained the world’s premiere oil and gas producer. But coal has continued to struggle. Bringing back coal in the United States was not something that could be achieved by executive decree.
For the rest of this article: https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/511198-what-trump-got-wrong-by-pushing-coal