Jonathan Lange: Trump Resurrected Coal - Let's Make Laws To Keep It Alive

While Wyoming’s coal towns like Kemmerer and Gillette bleed jobs, and while Rocky Mountain Power incessantly seeks a higher percentage of your household income, our leaders have done little more than line up for scraps from the federal feeding trough.

But this week, Wyoming’s finger-in-the-wind (A.K.A. “All-of-the-above”) energy policy was blown away by a breath of fresh air. 

President Donald Trump signed a document with an unmistakably Trumpian title: “Reinvigorating America’s Beautiful Clean Coal Industry and Amending Executive Order 14241.”

This looks like a game-changer. It sets a new policy for the United States of America by declaring that coal is “essential to our national and economic security.” And since coal is essential to our security, support of the coal industry is now “a national priority.”

We have heard grandiose promises before. What makes this one different?

Two answers follow that question. First, in fewer than 1,600 words, the president gave explicit assignments and aggressive timetables to his cabinet. Second, within days of the proclamation, logjams that have stagnated the coal industry for years were dynamited out of the water.

Let’s unpack the order. The president gave four broad directives to support, rather than attack, America’s coal industry. 

(1)   “removing Federal regulatory barriers that undermine coal production

(2) “encouraging the utilization of coal to meet growing domestic energy demands

(3) “increasing American coal exports, and

(4) “ensuring that Federal policy does not discriminate against coal production or coal-fired electricity generation.”

Trump directed the National Energy Dominance Council and the secretaries of the Interior, Agriculture and Energy to scour their agencies for policies that impede coal mining. They must propose policies to remedy those impediments by June 7, 2025. 

The Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture, in particular, were directed to lift bureaucratic roadblocks encumbering the leasing of federal land – and return to the actual laws passed by Congress in the Mineral Leasing Act of 1920, the Mineral Leasing Act for Acquired Lands of 1947, and the Multiple Mineral Development Act of 1954.

Likewise, Trump gives the secretaries of Transportation, Interior, Energy, Labor, Treasury and the Administrator of the EPA 30 days to scour their respective agencies for policies designed to “transition the Nation away from coal.” They also have a June 7 deadline to rescind or revise such policies. 

Turning to the financial realm, Trump directs agencies empowered to make federal loans to identify and rescind all policies that “discourage investment in coal production and coal-fired electricity generation.” 

This sea-change in federal policy will lift the government’s heavy and discriminatory thumb from the scale of free enterprise.

Two days after signing the “Beautiful Clean Coal” directive, the Department of the Interior canceled a requirement that the Bureau of Land Management write approximately 3,224 Environmental Impact Statements (EISs) across seven states.

Mere days before exiting the Oval Office, Biden’s Bureau of Land Management decided that thousands of leasing projects that had been environmentally approved between 2015 and 2020 would need to start from scratch. This is precisely the sort of malicious slow-walking that bureaucrats use to advance their ideological agendas.

It's not that the previous 3,224 environmental studies were never done. Rather, some bureaucrat decided that those studies did not adequately weigh “the social cost of greenhouse gasses.” So, they all needed to be redone.

Of course, nobody knows or agrees on what those “social costs” might be. But that’s not the point. The real point is that, during the decade that the BLM will spend figuring out how to measure “social costs,” 3,224 mining and drilling sites are taken out of production.

Such malicious governance has crushed coal mining communities across the Mountain West. And this is only one example of how Tuesday’s Beautiful Clean Coal directive will bring revitalization to communities, lower energy prices, and give true balance to Wyoming’s economy.

Will the effects of Trump’s action last beyond his four-year term? 

Probably not. And that’s OK. Presidents are supposed to direct only the execution of laws, not the making of laws. Lasting reform to let Wyoming’s legacy industries compete on a level playing field will require legislative action. 

Wyoming needs our governor, our state legislature, and our federal congressional delegation to enact these changes through law. Instead of begging for scraps from the federal larder, we should be making policy based on actualities—not upon ideological dogma.

That’s all it takes to unleash the power of Wyoming’s people and reinvigorate an economy that has been smothered by federal meddling.

Jonathan Lange is a Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod pastor in Evanston and Kemmerer and serves the Wyoming Pastors Network. Follow his blog at https://jonathanlange.substack.com/. Email: JLange64@protonmail.com.