Murray was the head of Murray Energy, America’s largest privately owned coal producer. At one time it had 8000 employees in six states and Columbia. Last year it went bankrupt.
Murray fought government regulations that protected miners and those that addressed climate change. He opposed the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan and called it “a political power grab of America’s power grid to change our country in a diabolical, if not evil, way.”
He was a big Trump supporter and praised Trump’s efforts to preserve coal jobs. He sued the New York Times for what he considered bad coverage. He sued John Oliver who called him “a geriatric Dr. Evil.” Neither suit was successful.
The current E.P.A. administrator, Andrew Wheeler, had been a lobbyist for Mr. Murray.
Ironically, in an industry that gave so many miners lung problems, Murray himself died of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Right now I’m feeling just a teeny bit of schadenfreude.
Info on Murray is from John Schwartz, “Robert Murray, 80, Powerful Coal Baron, Regulation Fighter and Trump Supporter,” New York Times (Oct. 28, 2020), p. B10. The schadenfreude is all mine.
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