<em>The Weekly Planet</em>: The Secret Political Power of Fossil Fuels
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A decade ago, the American coal industry began to die. From 2011 to 2016, more than 39,000 jobs eroded away. At a scientific conference last year, I met a group of researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich who were curious about how this had affected American politics and, most pointedly, Donald Trump’s razor-thin victory in Rust Belt states.
In a new working paper, they find that the backlash to lost coal jobs added tens of thousands of votes to Trump’s ledger in 2016. Their analysis bodes ill for Democrats—and it matters now, as former Vice President Joe Biden tries to retake Pennsylvania after Trump’s victory there four years ago.
The team began by looking at more than
