Mother Nature (WRATH)

[Mariner*]

The Tax Bill’s Gift to Big Coal
The legislation is a boon to fossil fuel companies not only because of what it includes, but what it doesn't.



“Despite rhetoric about a supposed war on coal, federal and state governments spent on average more than $4 billion annually incentivizing coal production in 2015 and 2016,” that report reads. The incentives preserved in the tax package include a nearly $1 billion annual subsidy for coal leasing in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin, which accounts for nearly 40 percent of the country’s coal production, and $100 million annually for the production of so-called “clean coal,” which does not exist. A combined $730 million in annual expenditures to cover shortfalls in coal miners’ pensions and black lung disability coverage. “This support for workers is critical,” Oil Change’s report reads, “but industry should pay for it.”

https://newrepublic.com/article/146388/tax-bills-gift-big-coal