Pollution From Coal Plants Is Killing An Average Of 60 People PER DAY

According to a new analysis, between the years 1999 and 2020, pollution from coal fired power plants was linked to the deaths of 460,000 people. If you do the math with those numbers, it breaks down to roughly 21,900 per year, or 60 American citizens PER DAY. These deaths are 100% preventable and unnecessary, as alternatives to fossil fuels have now been around for decades. The problem is that we have politicians that are fighting to keep coal alive, even as the rest of the planet tries to move on. Ring of Fire's Farron Cousins explains what's happening.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

A shocking new set of research published last Thursday in the journal. Science revealed that in the years from 1999 to 2020, there were at least 460,000 premature deaths here in the United States, directly attributable to pollution from coal fired power plants right here in the United States, 21 years at least 460 thousands, um, uh, thousand Americans sent to an early grave because we as a country, cannot kick our fossil fuel addiction. Now, I went ahead and did the math for you here. Now, the high end estimate is as many as, uh, uh, what would that be? 520,000 excess deaths. So four 60 is the low end, but on that low end, we're looking at 21,904 premature deaths every single year. You break it down even further, 60 people per day dying as a result of their expo exposure, excuse me, to pollution from coal fired power plants.

According to this research published in the journal science, how did they come up with these numbers? I'm glad you asked folks. They looked at the Medicaid Medicare deaths, you know, reported in these areas. They looked at the particulate concentrations. They looked at the causes of death. They looked at every single piece of data, and they put the picture together for us. And that picture is very clear because it's a picture of a giant sign that says fossil fuels are killing us. You know, many years ago when I was writing for, uh, de smog blog, uh, the pollution from coal-fired power plants, the, the deaths from pollution here in the United States, it's something I wrote about extensively. I did a lot on coal. And back then, and I mean, we're talking, you know, eight, nine years ago, most of the rest of the world was in the process of transitioning away from coal. Most of Europe has moved away from coal. One of the big places that was still relying on coal, although they were trying to get off it was China, India also still had a fairly decent amount of coal, but the United States was one of the only developed countries in the world still using coal as their, as their primary source for electricity generation. So for a couple hundred years, we have just been stuck in neutral, doing the same thing that literally our ancestors did. Burning coal

For heat, renewable energy exists. The technology behind renewable energy has made leaps and bounds in the last 20 years. But we as a country still refuse to move on for it, even though we can look at these numbers and see that it is killing us. So why, why is everybody else moving on? And we're not because of our politicians. That that is, that is the answer. It is our politicians. It is the people we send to Washington, dc It is people like Joe Manchin. It is the people left, right? Doesn't matter if they're taking money from the fossil fuel industry. They are not going to allow us to move forward off of these dying forms of energy that are killing us. So we need to kill the careers of those politicians. And keep in mind I said, kill the careers of them, end their career. Send them back home for good. Because if you don't, you may be one of those 60 people every day. Your mother could, your father, your kids, your spouse, your friends. Those 60 people dying on average per day are not just nameless, faceless individuals that you see in a chart that's somebody's family. And it could just as easily be yours.