President Barack Obama said opposition to his policies by coal miners and people in Appalachia is “perfectly legitimate” during a Monday interview with National Public Radio.
“If you are living in a town that historically has relied on coal and you see coal jobs diminishing, you probably are going to be more susceptible to the argument that I’ve been wiping out the economy in your area,” Obama said during the interview. “If somebody tells you that this is because of Obama’s war on coal, well, you know, that’s an argument you may be sympathetic to. And that’s perfectly legitimate.”
Coal mines lost 7,500 jobs in the last year alone, according to federal data, due to federal regulations aimed at preventing global warming and the resulting decline in the price of coal. A study in April found the coal industry lost 50,000 jobs from 2008 to 2012 due to regulations and cheap natural gas. The “coal country” of Appalachia has been economically devastated and has very few job options for the now unemployed workers.
The situation for coal miners would likely get worse if Obama’s Clean Power Plan is implemented. The Energy Information Administration predicts that the plan would more than double the number of coal plants shutting down over the next five years. The shutdowns have a cascading effect, causing coal production to collapse even further, by more than 30 percent over the next decade.
The Obama administration responded by offering a mere $14.5 million in federal funding for programs to retrain out-of-work coal miners, after imposing regulations that greatly hampered the American coal industry.
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