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FOSSIL FUELS

Land and Air Damage

Fossil fuels cause an extraordinary amount of land and air damage

EESI - Coleman and Dietz 19

AIR AND LAND DESTRUCTION FROM FOSSIL FUELS
Burning fossil fuels creates air pollutants such as:
- particulate matter
- carbon monoxide
- sulfur dioxide
- ozone
- Mercury
(note: Coal-fired power plants are also the largest source of airborne mercury emissions in the United States. Mercury can move through the food chain and accumulate in the flesh of fish, posing the greatest risk to pregnant women)
These pollutants lead to health impacts including:
- Asthma
- lung disease
- Bronchitis
- and other chronic respiratory diseases that may lead to premature death
Air pollutants from fossil fuels also contribute to:
- the development of lung cancers as well as other cancers (30 percent of cancer-related deaths each year)
- 200,000 premature deaths each year.
Fine particulate matter from U.S. coal plants (in 2010) resulted in:
- 13,200 deaths
- 9,700 hospitalizations
- 20,000 heart attacks
Extraction and refining of fossil fuel may result in a host of negative outcomes including:
- landscape degradation
- risk for spills
Coal extraction and burning involves
- Strip mining (65% of production
(note: Involves clearing vegetation, soil, and rock above coal deposits, leading to permanent damage of landscapes and the creation of massive amounts of mine wastes)
- pollution across the supply chain
- coal ash deposits
  - a combustion byproduct containing toxic heavy metals like arsenic, mercury, and chromium
  - one of the largest sources of industrial waste in the United States
  - 95 percent of coal ash storage sites have contaminated groundwater at levels deemed unsafe by the EPA
  - In the flooding that followed Hurricane Florence, several coal ash storage sites in North Carolina overflowed or were damaged, spilling contaminated water into surrounding area
Some major oil spills:
- The 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill polluted 1,300 miles of shore and cost about $2 billion to clean up
- The 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, the largest ever, released 3.19 million barrels of crude oil into the Gulf of Mexico and cost BP (the company responsible) $61.6 billion.
- The 2010 Enbridge spill in southwest Michigan released more than 20,100 barrels of tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River, creating one of the largest inland oil spills in U.S. history.
- The Taylor oil spill is on track to become the largest in American history, having released tens of thousands of gallons every day into the Gulf of Mexico for more than 14 years.

Subsidies

Subsidies uphold and enable the fossil fuel industry to carry out large-scale pollution

Roosevelt Institute 19 (additional sources referenced)
- The US government spends approximately $20.5 billion subsidizing the fossil fuel industry 1
  - $14.7 billion federal subsidies
  - $5.8 billion state subsidies
- Subsidies:
  - prop up the existing fossil fuel sector
  - drive up fossil fuel extraction and use
  - develop domestic fossil fuel assets
  - represent an obstacle to renewable energy investment by artificially increasing the relative cost of renewable energy 2
- If we got rid of fossil fuel subsidies, almost half of all new US oil production would be unprofitable and thus left undeveloped 3
- Additional sources:
Erickson et al. 17
- “We find that, at the current price of $50 per barrel, about half (53%) of subsidy value goes to projects that would have proceeded anyway… This fraction of support leaking to profit rises to nearly all (98%) of subsidy value at $100 per barrel, reflecting what other researchers have suggested: that regardless of the oil price, the majority of taxpayer resources provided to the industry end up as company profits.”

Trump and Coal

Trump has committed CRINGE

Promotion of Coal Industry:

Trump has been promoting coal, which has been a dying industry due to cheaper natural gas and fracking. Coal jobs have decreased in number and coal stocks have fallen substantially since he took office.[1][2][3]
New Trump-era EPA policy changes which relax regulations on coal mining won’t save the industry, but only prolong its downfall.[1][2]
Trump’s new EPA policies on coal mining would be harmful to the environment and to the health of others.[1][2][3][4]
Trump’s EPA has strong ties to the coal industry, including coal lobbyists.[1][2][3]

Climate Change Denial:

Trump’s first EPA head denied anthropogenic climate change, and Trump chose a climate change skeptic to lead the EPA’s transition into the Trump administration.[1][2]
Trump has made a variety of statements on climate change which contradict each other or make it unclear what he actually believes.[1][2]
Trump has promoted multiple debunked myths about climate change.[1]
“Climate change is a hoax manufactured by the Chinese to make American manufacturing non-competitive”
“Cold weather disproves climate change”
“Fighting climate change will cost millions of jobs”
“Climate change as a term was picked up to replace global warming”
“Climate scientists have political motivations which skew their work”
Trump dismissed a report by his own administration which reaffirmed the scientific consensus on climate.[1][2]
Several government reports on climate change contradict the climate skepticism and climate denialism that the Trump administration is known to promote.[1][2]
Trump’s administration has repeatedly tried to scrub or downplay climate change in their reports.[1][2][3][4][5]
The Trump administration disbanded the federal Advisory Committee for the Sustained National Climate Assessment, amid leaks of a report from scientists working for the government which warned that humans have had a major impact on climate change.[1][2][3]