0:00
It's an industrial revolution-era power source, and Donald Trump wants it to power the AI revolution
0:08
He believes coal is what's needed to feed the energy-hungry data centres used by AI platforms
0:15
a demand that's predicted to skyrocket in the near future. Over the past 25 years, coal-fired plants' share of electricity generation in the US dropped from 50% to 16%
0:27
In parallel, coal production has been in steady decline. Trump is determined to reverse those trends, but at what cost
0:36
Most of the coal produced in the US comes from strip mines and mountaintop removal
0:41
which cause huge damage to the immediate environment. And the extraction is just the first part
0:47
Trump calls it beautiful, clean coal, but that's a huge misnomer. When burned, coal produces more greenhouse gases than any other fossil fuel
0:57
and releases dangerous particulate pollution into the air. Public health researchers found that pollution from coal-fired plants
1:04
killed almost half a million people in the US in the first two decades of this century
1:10
The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that around 40,000 people currently work in the coal industry, down from 70,000 10 years ago
1:19
Much of that decline happened during the first Trump administration, though he had promised to revive coal jobs then
1:26
While the Biden administration funded programs to retrain coal industry workers for the renewable energy sector
1:32
Trump has tried to roll back supports for clean energy. But the renewables industry is growing despite those efforts as companies look at the bottom line
1:43
Renewable power plants are fast to build and provide much cheaper energy than fossil fuels
