Tom Borelli, a former science director at Philip Morris who fought claims that secondhand tobacco causes lung cancer and respiratory illness in children, is now touted on Fox News as an expert on the cleanliness of the coal industry. Borelli was busy this election season fighting Obama’s “war on coal” on behalf of his new employer, FreedomWorks.

Borelli has a long history of attacking the EPA on behalf of Big Tobacco. Serving in his role as Philip Morris’ Director of Corporate Scientific Affairs, Borelli appeared in a notorious 1992 film produced by Philip Morris attacking the Environmental Protection Agency for declaring secondhand tobacco smoke a known cancer causing agent.

While phasing out coal is not at all a bad thing, it’s not really being accomplished by the new EPA rule as much as by market forces. Which means that we’re looking at what amounts to a status quo as far as emissions goes. That’s not only inadequate to stop climate change in the future, but we may be at the tipping point of irreversible damage, according to Scientific American.

After years of study, the EPA will finally release their initial greenhouse gas emissions rules for power plants, which are likely to end the construction of any coal-fired plants from this point forward. The rules have a delay and do not apply to existing coal-fired plants, but they will change how utilities and generation companies plan for the future.

Today, the EPA flat-out revoked the permit for one of the largest mountaintop removal projects in the nation.

This is pretty good news. It’s important to note that the death of climate legislation does not mean the death of carbon regulation. It just moves it into a new phase, where the EPA takes the lead. And the Administration will protect that privilege.

New West Virginia Senator Carte Goodwin opposes any cap and trade legislation before the Senate, CQ reports.