TCR Brief: EPA Chief Picks Exact Spot With Highest Lung Cancer Rate In The U.S. To Announce He’ll Allow Plants To Pollute More

Scott Pruitt says that today he’ll order a soup-to-nuts repeal of the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan. That plan aimed to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by about 1/3 by 2030. “The war on coal is over” Pruitt crowed.

According to data from the Centers for Disease Control, while making the announcement in Hazard, Kentucky, Pruitt was standing in pretty much the exact spot where the highest incidence of lung cancer occurs in the entire U.S.

For many proud coal miners in the area, the risk of lung cancer just goes with the job. Obama’s vision would’ve required construction of huge new wind and solar farms in order to help reach his plan’s stated goal, so presumably cleaner, safer jobs would’ve been created in those industries. But maybe not fast enough.

So from an economic perspective, what the Trump Administration is trying to do is kind of like “Making America Like The Final Failing Days Of Soviet Russia Again”, where archaic industries and production methods are propped up just to avoid the implications of having a lot of angry people out of work, and to support wealthy friends in the business.

(This story originally appeared in “The Chaos Report” Newsletter. Subscribe at https://thechaosreport.com/subscribe/?scr=Medium)