President Donald Trump, who has called climate change a hoax, signed an executive order revoking several key pieces of environmental protection legislation signed by his predecessor, Barack Obama. Josh Robin filed the following report.
He campaigned as a coal-miner champion, putting on a helmet as he stumped in West Virginia.
And now that he's president, coal miners are behind Donald Trump as he says he is bringing their jobs back.
"My administration is putting an end to the war on coal," Trump said.
It's a war Trump says his predecessor oversaw, particularly with President Barack Obama's Clean Power Plan. It created first-ever standards targeting carbon pollution from power plants, pollution overwhelmingly seen as unleashing climate change.
Now, Trump is rewriting the Clean Power Plan. The move also lifts a 14-month ban on coal mining on federal lands, and revokes and rescinds six Obama-era orders and reports related to climate change and carbon pollution.
"That is what this is all about - bringing back our jobs, bringing back our dreams and making America wealthy again," Trump said.
"President Trump is using coal miners as a prop, and he's giving them false hopes," said David Doniger of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Doniger says it's automation and cheaper alternatives, not regulations, killing coal jobs.
The blue line on the energy department graphic at the bottom of the article is coal production plummeting, with natural gas rising and renewable energy, the purple, replacing the yellow nuclear energy.
Put together, jobs in solar and wind power generation more than double combined employment in nuclear, coal, natural gas and oil generation. That's according to the Department of Energy.
"If he really cared about coal county, he'd be investing in helping the miners and the coal counties to get into the clean energy economy," Doniger said.
In the meantime, the battle shifts to court, where the Clean Power Plan has already been suspended.
The expectation is that the Trump administration will drop the defense launched by the Obama adminstration. But if that happens, New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman says he will pick up the defense, with a coalition of states and cities.