Robert E. Murray, the son of a coal miner who became one of the nation’s most powerful coal barons, along the way fighting worker-safety and environmental regulations and lending major support to President Trump, died on Sunday at his home in St. Clairsville, Ohio. His lawyer and close friend Michael J. Shaheen said the cause was complications of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a stiffening of lung tissues that required Mr. Murray to breathe with the help of a portable oxygen tank. The company he founded, Murray Energy, became the nation’s largest privately owned coal producer, employing about 8,000 people in six states and in Colombia at its peak before declaring bankruptcy last year and re-emerging under a new name. A brash crusader for the mining industry, Mr. Murray fought government regulations that protected miners’ safety and health and addressed climate change — especially the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, which sought to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from power plants. He once called the Obama initiative “a political power grab of America’s power grid to change our country in a diabolical, if not evil, way.”

Source: New York Times October 27, 2020 21:00 UTC