A loaded hauler ferries freshly dug coal from the Eagle Butte mine outside Gillette, Wyoming. Most of Wyoming's coal mines are open pit, which means workers blast and dig away the top layers of dirt to reach the coal seams below, and then cover the area back up once the coal is gone. But demand for Wyoming coal is dropping as the nation moves toward renewable sources of energy that don't contribute to climate change.

by Trevor Hughes, USA TODAY • July 8, 2021

Tim Kaumo grew up in the shadow of Wyoming's imposing Jim Bridger Power Plant, with its four towering exhaust stacks and rumbling trains delivering a steady stream of coal feeding the hungry boilers converting carbon into electricity.

Where some people see a massive monument to a climate changed by the burning of fossil fuels, Kaumo, 55, sees jobs. A stable community. Low tax rates. Good schools.

In Wyoming, support for coal runs as deep and as wide as the jet-black seams of carbon ripped from the ground in massive open-pit mines, even as much of the rest of the industrialized world increasingly phases out the use of fossil fuels to reduce the harm of climate change that’s powering severe weather across the United States and globally.

"You can't forget about coal and the important role that those jobs and those families play in this community," said Kaumo, the mayor of Rock Springs, the closest town to the Bridger power plant. "Jim Bridger has always been that strong icon, that foundation built on Wyoming coal."

But that foundation is faltering as the nation shifts away from coal.

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