But can the struggling industry make a comeback? EXCLUSIVE: The House Energy and Commerce Committee is set to revive the National Coal Council and "reinvigorate America's beautiful clean coal industry," as President Donald Trump put it. Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie, R-Ky., told Fox News Digital the National Coal Council legislation will successfully pass out of his committee Wednesday and have a good chance of passing the full House. Michael Rulli, R-Ohio, and Riley Moore, R-W.V., are leading the legislation to reestablish the council, effectively canceled by former President Joe Biden, and support the clean coal industry for a multitude of reasons, including energy security at a time of Middle East uncertainty. Rulli told Fox News Digital the Biden administration's endeavors against the council and the coal industry writ-large were a "deliberate" effort to "wipe out coal, kill jobs, and make America dependent on foreign energy."

This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Last Tuesday, President Donald Trump held a press conference to announce the signing of executive orders intended to shape American energy policy in favor of one particular source: coal, the most carbon-intense fossil fuel. "I call it beautiful, clean coal," President Trump said while flanked by a crowd of miners at the White House. "I tell my people never use the word coal unless you put'beautiful, clean' before it." Trump has talked about saving coal, and coal jobs, for as long as he's been in politics.

On Tuesday, President Donald Trump held a press conference to announce the signing of executive orders intended to shape American energy policy in favor of one particular source: coal, the most carbon-intense fossil fuel. "I call it beautiful, clean coal," President Trump said while flanked by a crowd of miners at the White House. "I tell my people never use the word coal, unless you put'beautiful, clean' before it." Trump has talked about saving coal, and coal jobs, for as long as he's been in politics. This time, he's got a convenient vehicle for his policies: the growth of AI and data centers, which could potentially supercharge American energy demand over the coming years.

Power plants can deploy these innovative technologies today to more accurately predict the condition of assets and schedule appropriate maintenance to correct equipment problems before failure. Although the new administration in Washington has reversed the "war on coal," long-term trends in the U.S. are not promising. Most coal-fired capacity was built between 1950 and 1990, and the average coal plant is about 42 years old. With plant retirements expected to continue in 2018 and beyond, investment in new plants has come to a standstill. The confluence of regulatory issues and alternative energy sources is well known.

The following is the text of a talk I gave in San Francisco on December 1st, 2016. The audience was readers of my newsletter, Exponential View. You can sign up here. This is a long (7,500 word) transcript of the talk. You can scan it to see the slides and accompanying exhibits if that is easier. Or even read it in more than one sitting…. Exponential View has a purpose. In between all the emojis and all the spelling mistakes, this is what it's about: This is me on my first day at school back when I was in Zambia in sub-Saharan Africa. On the right is my friend Rehan, who I reconnected recently through Facebook. He is now known as Dr. Freeze and he does non-invasive body sculpting in Orange County. So I can get you a good rate. But I think it's important, this starting point is important. We often are inspired from where we come from and what the hell was I doing in Zambia? My dad was trained as economist and accountant, well he is retired now, but then he was an economist and was down in Zambia building the kind of institutions that we take for granted in countries like the U.S. and the U.K. to make the country function. Zambia had just got independence from the U.K. It needed a deeper civil service, it was having to build its legal system, create its system of distribution and so on. So I got an early exposure to the importance of economic institutions for making societies wealthier and making them work. While I was down in Zambia, which is a land-locked country and doesn't have great access to the sea and this is the 1970s, so we didn't have a vast range of toys.

We have a crisis of work. The secure, well-paid jobs of the past -- many of them in manufacturing -- are disappearing. What is replacing them is insecurity and uncertainty. The "gig economy", where people are paid performance by performance -- or piece by piece. "Piecework", we used to call it.