Burn, Baby, Burn: Trump’s Plan to Roast the Planet (and Call It ‘Freedom’)

🔥 Introduction: The Grand Coal Theater

If you thought coal was destined to fade into history, think again. Trump is attempting a bold, some might say deranged resurgence of the dirtiest fuel imaginable. He’s not just whispering slogans; he’s opening 13 million acres of public land for coal leases and dropping $625 million in federal dollars to prop up coal-fired plants. AP News

This isn’t energy policy. It’s performance art. A glittering show of brute-force climate denial masquerading as patriotism. It’s “freedom” spelled with a coal plume.

Make no mistake: this is war on the future.

1 | “Mine, Baby, Mine” Trump’s Coal Revival Blueprint

Let’s unpack the mechanics of this coal-powered delusion:

• 13 million acres for coal mining. The federal government is opening vast tracts to extraction, legitimizing an industry that makes climate devastation systemic. AP News
• $625 million in subsidies. Money to recommission, modernize, or resurrect old coal plants, i.e. prop up dying infrastructure. AP News
• Cutting royalties for coal leases. The royalty rate is dropped from 12.5% to 7%. In other words: taxpayers lose, coal companies gain. AP News
• Forced extensions of aging plants. Trump’s orders push plants in states like Michigan and Pennsylvania to keep running past scheduled retirements. AP News
• Regulation rollbacks. The EPA is pushing to nullify emissions rules, the ones that guard us from mercury, arsenic, greenhouse gases. AP News
• Exemptions for polluters. Nearly 70 coal plants have been granted two-year exemptions from toxic pollution limits. AP News

What’s this if not a bailout for Big Pollution?

2 | The Gaslight: Trump’s Coal Narrative vs. Reality

Trump and his acolytes fancy this as “reliable,” “beautiful,” “freedom energy.” But those are all circus mirrors. The facts say otherwise:

• “Beautiful, clean coal” is Orwellian. Yes, coal has become marginally cleaner per unit; it still produces massive greenhouse gas emissions, toxic metals, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, particulate matter. AP News
• Coal is uncompetitive. It’s more expensive than natural gas, and renewables + storage continue to outperform in cost. Trump is trying to prop up a money-losing relic. AP News
• Electric demand doesn’t justify coal. Trump claims this is needed for AI, data centers, electrification surges. But grid modeling shows that renewables + battery + demand flexibility are far better suited than resurrecting decrepit coal plants. Reuters
• Climate and health costs are externalized. The price Americans pay is invisible in Trump’s accounting. But children breathing mercury, communities with poisoned water supplies, increased hospitalizations, those are real.

Trump is marketing death as progress.

3 | The Hellscapes He’s Waking Up

If this plan is fully unleashed, here’s what begins to collapse:

• Climate trajectories. Any serious reversal of emissions policies will blow apart chances to limit warming to 1.5 °C.
• Public health. Expect surges in respiratory disease, neural damage, heavy-metal poisoning, especially in marginalized communities.
• Waterways and ecosystems. Clean-water protections are being delayed; coal ash will leach into rivers, poisoning aquatic life. AP News
• Economic deadweight. Money funneled into obsolete infrastructure is money not building a resilient, diversified, low-carbon economy.
• Social justice disasters. Environmental burdens will fall hardest on Black, Indigenous, low-income communities already suffering from over-pollution.

Trump is laying down a red carpet for catastrophe.

4 | Hypocrisy & Spin: Branding Doom as Patriotism

Observe the wraps and ribbons on this madness:

• Trump claims “energy independence,” “American sovereignty,” and “power dominance.” But his choices chain us to carbon markets, climate wars, and geopolitical fallout.
• He mocks climate science on the global stage calling it a “con job” while pushing a fossil fuel agenda that will ensure increasingly violent climate impacts. AP News
• He frames regulators as tyrants and the EPA as the enemy, while quietly bending that same agency to service polluters.
• He conflates patriotism with combustion. The logic: “If you're not burning coal, you’re surrendering America.” It’s a death cult rhetorically packaged as nationalism.

5 | Where This Could Hit the Wall

Before Trump’s coal revival becomes the world’s worst furnace, there are roadblocks:

• Legal challenges. Youth plaintiffs in Lighthiser v. Trump are already fighting his fossil-fuel executive orders, alleging constitutional violations. Wikipedia
• Regulatory inertia. Rolling back decades of environmental rules will face court fights, scientific reviews, and public backlash. AP News
• Market resistance. Utilities may not adopt coal revival if gas and renewables continue to beat it on cost.
• Political pushback. In states suffering climate disasters, voters may reject a platform that accelerates the damage.
• Physical impossibility. Many coal plants are physically degraded or uneconomical to retrofit or restart; some have been retired for good reasons. For example: the Cholla Power Plant in Arizona was shuttered in 2025 despite Trump’s orders to keep it alive. Wikipedia

So yes, the theater might outrun the traction.

6 | A Call to Arms (and Strategy)

The GOPocalypse is in progress. Here’s how we light up the pushback:

• Expose the contradiction. Every speech about “freedom energy” must be met with the simple question: “Whose lungs, whose water, whose future?”
• Make the health crisis visible. Elevate stories of people living next to coal plants, drinking contaminated water, battling asthma.
• Own the climate stakes. Lay out very clearly: “This is not politics. This is survival.”
• Champion the alternative. Push solar, wind, storage, grid reform, not as idealistic dreams, but battlefield necessities.
• Use litigation and democracy. Support the youth lawsuits, litigate rollbacks, push for climate accountability in elections.

Conclusion: Roast the Spin, Stop the Burn

Trump isn’t reinventing energy policy. He’s rebooting iron-age combustion and calling it “progress.” He’s igniting a carbon inferno under the pretense of national strength. He’s packaging toxic nostalgia as patriotism. He’s bringing dynamite to a forest and asking us to call it fireworks.

So here’s the bottom line: burning the planet is not freedom. It is surrender to a climate death spiral, to profiteers, to a vision that admits no future. The real act of patriotism is fighting this plan, loudly and unapologetically.

If we don’t stop the burn, we won’t have a country left to save.