Coal and the Clean Power Plan | War on the EPA  
Video 3 Transcript: The Coal Industry and State Attorneys General Join Forces  

ON-SCREEN TEXT: The EPA announced the Clean Power Plan in 2015.  

NARRATOR: The plan called on states to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants by the year 2030. 

AL ARMENDARIZ: It didn't require all coal and gas and oil to be phased out in the country. It didn't ban the use of fossil fuels. It didn't require any power stations in this country to retire. All it said was, "Reduce your emissions by about 30% and we'll give you a couple of decades to do it." 

ANDREW MILLER: The Clean Power Plan, if that is put into effect, you're going to have a significant increase in electric rates in this country. You're going to have a significant loss of jobs. 

NARRATOR: The EPA and some experts who analyzed the plan said it would end up creating jobs. But fears still resonated, as did predictions that it would hasten the demise of the coal industry. 

BOB MURRAY: It is a strategy way beyond coal companies. Of course, it's a human issue to me because my employees' lives are being destroyed. 

NARRATOR: On the day the plan was announced, Pruitt and the other A.Gs. were meeting at the Greenbrier Resort in West Virginia with coal baron Bob Murray. 

ERIC LIPTON: Bob Murray is a kind of elder statesman of the coal industry and is convinced that, that the Obama administration is... has a war on coal and is hurting his employees and hurting his company and hurting his profits. That day, he was in a private meeting with Republican attorneys general to discuss the Clean Power Plan and how they were going to challenge it. 

NARRATOR: Murray wanted Pruitt and the others to join him in a lawsuit against the EPA to stop the plan, claiming federal overreach. I gave them the work that we had done for the past two years. They listened intently. His position was that the plan would cost the coal industry billions while doing little for the environment. And he rejected the overwhelming science that fossil fuel emissions were driving climate change. 

MURRAY: We don't have a climate change problem. It is not real and not scientifically based. It's a theology. It's politics. And it's an agenda. They packed the U.S. EPA with radical environmentalists, never created a job in their lives, never produced anything for society, but sat there writing rules all day. I have nothing but contempt. 

LIPTON: And, and then they walk out and they announce, after having a briefing with Murray Energy that they're going to sue.