Appeals court says U.S. downplayed coal mine's climate impacts

FILE - Heavy equipment moves coal outside Signal Peak Energy's Bull Mountain mine near Roundup, Mont., on Aug. 28, 2009. A federal appeals court says U.S. officials improperly downplayed the climate change impacts from burning coal when they approved a large expansion at an underground Montana mine that would release an estimated 190 million tons of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a ruling Monday, April 4, 2022 that Interior Department officials "hid the ball" under the Trump administration by failing to fully account for emissions from bur…