America is often lambasted as a carbon villain. Reality is different. Today Barack Obama will announce new rules to mandate—for the first time—reductions to power stations’ carbon emissions, requiring a 32% cut from 2005 levels by 2030. A Supreme Court ruling in 2007 classified CO2 as a pollutant, putting it within the remit of the Environmental Protection Agency. That allows the president to take unilateral action, bypassing Congress. The limits on carbon emissions have great political significance: they delight climate-conscious liberals, but will hit America’s struggling coal country hard. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, won re-election in Kentucky last year with a simple slogan: “Coal. Guns. Freedom.” Democrats are about to become even more unpopular there, and in West Virginia and Wyoming. But 180,000 Americans work in the burgeoning solar power industry. Only 93,000 work in coal.