The main purpose of this ongoing blog will be to track planetary extreme, or record temperatures related to climate change. Any reports I see of ETs will be listed below the main topic of the day. I’ll refer to extreme or record temperatures as ETs (not extraterrestrials).😜
Main Topic: ‘Mine, Baby, Mine’: Trump Officials Offer $625 Million to Rescue Coal
Dear Diary. Yesterday we noted that utilities were sliding backwards towards burning more fossil fuels for power generation led by awful stances from the United States. Today we will specifically look at Trump’s coal policies, which to be honest are beyond horrific. It’s almost as if some evil man was twitching his mustache while tying some damsel in distress to a railroad track. Only in this case that damsel is us and our climate.
Here is more from the New York Times:
Trump Officials Offer $625 Million to Rescue Coal – The New York Times
‘Mine, Baby, Mine’: Trump Officials Offer $625 Million to Rescue Coal
The new effort, which includes opening 13.1 million acres of federal land for mining and eliminating pollution limits, aims to save an industry that has been declining for decades.
A coal mining operation in West Virginia.Credit…Adrees Latif/Reuters
By Brad Plumer and Lisa Friedman
Reporting from Washington
Sept. 29, 2025
The Trump administration on Monday outlined a coordinated plan to revive the mining and burning of coal, the largest contributor to climate change worldwide.
Coal use has been declining sharply in the United States since 2005, displaced in many cases by cheaper and cleaner natural gas, wind and solar power.
But in a series of steps aimed at improving the economics of coal, the Interior Department said it would open 13.1 million acres of federal land for coal mining and reduce the royalty rates that companies would need to pay to extract coal. The Energy Department said it would offer $625 million to upgrade existing coal plants around the country, which have been closing at a fast clip, in order to extend their life spans.
The Environmental Protection Agency said it would repeal dozens of regulations set by the Biden administration to curb carbon dioxide, mercury and other pollutants from coal plants. The agency would also revise a regulation limiting wastewater pollution from power plants that the industry considers costly.
In what has become a familiar tableau, miners in hard hats stood as a backdrop as administration officials gathered at the Interior Department and repeated a phrase that President Trump said he now expects of any employee who discusses the black, combustible rock: “Clean, beautiful coal.”
The announcements came days after Mr. Trump told the United Nations General Assembly that the United States would “stand ready to provide any country with abundant, affordable energy supplies if you need them,” referring to liquefied natural gas, oil and coal. Mr. Trump has promoted the coal industry ever since campaigning frequently with coal miners 2016.
While coal plants once generated nearly half of America’s electricity, they produced just 16 percent last year. Hundreds of coal plants have retired since the mid-2000s as utilities switched to natural gas, wind and solar power. Stricter regulations on air and water pollution have also made burning coal more expensive. Coal mining, which has been linked to significant air pollution and water contamination as well as black lung disease in coal miners, has also faced increased federal restrictions.
“This is an industry that was under assault,” said Doug Burgum, the Interior secretary who along with Lee Zeldin, the E.P.A. administrator, blamed regulations on what they described as an ideological war on coal. Chris Wright, the Energy secretary, said Monday morning on Fox that coal was “out of fashion with the chardonnay set in San Francisco, Boulder, Colo., and New York City.”
The phrase “climate change” was not mentioned during the hourlong coal event. Instead, the officials described coal as an economic necessity. “In addition to to drill, baby drill, we need to mine, baby, mine,” Mr. Burgum said.
It is unclear how much the Trump administration can revitalize the industry. During Mr. Trump’s first term, roughly 100 coal plants shut down and the total number of miners employed in the United States continued to fall.
The outlook for coal power has become somewhat less bleak in recent years. Growing interest in artificial intelligence and data centers has fueled a surge in electricity demand, and utilities have decided to keep more than 50 coal-burning units open past their scheduled closure dates, according to America’s Power, an industry trade group. As the Trump administration moves to loosen pollution limits on coal power, more plants could stay open longer or run more frequently.
The Trump administration is also taking more drastic action to keep coal plants operating this time around. In June, the Energy Department issued an emergency order to prevent a coal plant in Michigan from closing as scheduled, although neither the grid operator nor the local utility had asked the agency to do so. The cost of that extension is expected to fall on consumers.
Mr. Wright has hinted that more such orders could be on the way. All told, more than 100 plants have announced plans to retire by the end of Mr. Trump’s term.
“I think this administration’s policy is going to be to stop the closure of coal plants, most of them cooperatively working with utilities,” Mr. Wright said during an onstage interview last week at The New York Times’s Climate Forward event.
At Monday’s announcement, Wells Griffith, the under secretary for energy, said that a recent Energy Department study found that America’s grid faced a higher risk of blackout if too many coal plants retire. That study has been criticized by a number of clean-energy groups and Democratic-led states for being overly pessimistic about the ability of other fast-growing sources like wind, solar, batteries and natural gas to help fortify the nation’s power system.
Holly Bender, the chief program officer at the Sierra Club, an environmental group, said the administration’s actions would increase air and water pollution and raise electricity bills. “The Trump administration’s reckless actions announced today will hurt the American people, all to prop up the aging and outdated coal industry,” she said.
The Sierra Club in 2009 launched what would become a more than $150 million campaign called “Beyond Coal” that lobbies for the retirement of coal-fired power plants. Funded by Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, the campaign this year claimed its actions had contributed to the closure of two-thirds of coal-fired generators in the United States.
While it champions fossil fuels, the administration has taken steps to restrict the use of wind and solar power nationwide, criticizing those sources as unreliable and too dependent on the weather.
Coal power has been growing around the world in China and other countries. Last year, global coal demand reached a record high, according to the International Energy Agency, although the agency says it still expects coal demand to plateau in the coming years.
Mr. Burgum cited that trend as a reason for the United States to invest in coal. “China is absolutely the number one user of coal and they are aggressively adding more power,” he said. “Our nation can lead in technology but if we don’t lead in electrical production, we’re going to lose the A.I. arms race.”
Even as it burns more coal, China has also led the world in building wind and solar power. Last week the country announced for the first time plans to start reducing its planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions by 2035.
Brad Plumer is a Times reporter who covers technology and policy efforts to address global warming.
Lisa Friedman is a Times reporter who writes about how governments are addressing climate change and the effects of those policies on communities.
Here are more “ETs” recorded from around the planet the last couple of days, their consequences, and some extreme temperature outlooks, as well as any extreme precipitation reports:
Here is More Climate News from Tuesday:
(As usual, this will be a fluid post in which more information gets added during the day as it crosses my radar, crediting all who have put it on-line. Items will be archived on this site for posterity. In most instances click on the pictures of each tweet to see each article. The most noteworthy items will be listed first.)