Study: blaming coal's decline solely on environmental regulations makes life harder for miners - Entrepreneur Generations

A new study found that "simplifying the story of the decline of coal—and blaming it entirely on environmental regulation—is harming coal miners in the United States," Sophie Yeo reports for Pacific Standard. That's useful knowledge since, "to date, much research has been devoted to the economics of this shift, but there's been less work examining the politics of the transition."

The study, recently published in the journal Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, surveyed local lawmakers in Colorado and Utah about their support for just transition policies, which are policies that aim to protect coal miners' livelihoods as the economy transitions away from coal. Lead researcher Adam Mayer, an assistantships professor in environmental policy at Colorado State University, discovered that how they presented the issue affected how the policymakers treated it. 

"Oversimplifying the story of coal's decline did more harm than good, they found, while a candid conversation about the varied and complicated reasons for this trend bolstered support for policies to help coal miners assimilate into a new, cleaner society," Yeo reports.

In theory, helping miners through the transition away from coal sounds like something both political parties would support, but in practice it's been more complicated. "One respondent to Mayer's survey, who identified as a Republican, explained that he didn't support just transition policies because he believed the government should just remove environmental regulations; another Republican said that he opposed the welfare state in general," Yeo reports. 

In Mayer's survey, he found that emphasizing the complicated reasons for coal's decline lead to more lawmaker support for pension protections than blaming the trend only on environmental regulations, Yeo reports.

from The Rural Blog http://bit.ly/2GcukEh Study: blaming coal's decline solely on environmental regulations makes life harder for miners - Entrepreneur Generations

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