Jay Rockefeller Calls Out the Coal Industry
This EPA rule – two decades in the making – also moves utility companies ahead on employing technologies that will help guarantee coal jobs well into the future. Some utilities, including some in West Virginia, already have invested in technology and are ready to comply with the rule.
But across our state, there also are smaller, older and less efficient coal-fired plants slated for closure, not because of EPA regulations alone, but – as corporate boards decided long ago and companies themselves will tell you – because they are no longer economical as compared to low-emission, cheaper natural gas plants.
I remain deeply concerned about job losses. And I believe we need not only an immediate plan for job transition opportunities, but also a renewed and collective focus on the future – on the jobs that will come with new manufacturing and next generation technology.
In West Virginia, we need allies – not adversaries. But coal operators have yet to step up as strong allies and partners ready to lead, innovate and fight for the future.
Instead of moving the conversation on coal forward, some in the industry have demanded all-or-nothing, time and again, for the ill-sighted purpose of a sound bite or flashy billboard. These efforts make no progress, they don’t pursue attainable policy change, and they certainly don’t create or save jobs.
Change is upon us – from finite coal reserves and aging power plants, to the rise of natural gas and the very real shift to a lower-carbon economy.
Denying these factors and insisting that the EPA alone is going to make or break coal is dishonest and futile. Feeding fears with insular views and divergent motivations will leave our communities in the dust.
West Virginians deserve better.
Damn right they do.
West Virginians deserve better.
Serious question, why?
How is that a serious question?
West Virginia, on aggregate, seems to be a dispiritingly bleak place in terms of social progress (though I’m given to understand it’s got outstanding natural beauty; given than the topic is coal companies, perhaps that should be still got outstanding natural beauty). But the defects demonstrated by a strong majority shouldn’t blind you to the obvious fact that a population of nearly two million, even if all too many of them are thoroughly regrettable, will include countless innocents, innumerable wonderful people, and no few paragons of virtue.
This is why I never cared much for the “fuck the South” sentiment that you sometimes find on liberal blogs. Look, I get the frustration, but that mindset overlooks precisely what you point out.
Well, that’s true. But it’s true of a lot of places. It’s pretty clear that the politicians that the South consistently elects don’t think I’m an American, and would throw me out if they could. At what point do you say “God bless, you go try your insane experiment in resurrecting the Zombie Gilded Age, but you can do it without the tax transfers you get from people like me. We’ll have a liberal asylum policy for your political refugees.”
We’re basically trapped in a cage with a sadistic death cult, politically speaking.
Sad to say, the phrase “death cult” has come to mind before in this context.
What’s worse, I don’t think we’re being unreasonable or even uncivil by saying so.
A lot of what they have written upsets me, but Robert Paxton, Eric Hofstadter, Dave Niewert and Bob Altemeyer have never seemed so relevant as they do now. (That this scholarship and journalism is so relevant today is what is really alarming.)
Glad I read them, I guess; on the other hand I’d sleep easier if I hadn’t.
When blaming southerners for their elected representatives, please bear in mind that we are talking about the region with the most dysfunctional voting systems, by and large, in the country.
Please also bear in mind that I’m not completely absolving southern voters for the results of their elections. Simply saying that there are a number of forces present throughout the south that make change and progress very difficult, regardless of what the people might want.
We’re not all hateful bigots down here. Hell, not even most of us are like that.
What he said. Also, fuck you if you don’t care about living, breathing people.
Let me offer a rebuttal. I’m sure that there are delightful and innocent living, breathing people in that area. Unfortunately, they aren’t applying a counterweight to their shithead neighbors–and they do have agency; they do have some responsibility to push back.
Then when their economy/ecology goes into the shitter, they end up in coastal urban areas like the one where I live, looking for work and a place to live. Not once do they acknowledge that the incredibly poor decisions of their neighbors or themselves brought them to said coastal urban areas, and no attempt is made to assure their new neighbors that they will try to avoid making the same mess in their new home.
This has happened before; it is happening now. I’m not feeling at all well-disposed toward my mid-country brethren, as I daily dodge homicidal assholes with Wyoming and Idaho plates.
“Then when their economy/ecology goes into the shitter, they end up in coastal urban areas like the one where I live, looking for work and a place to live.”
So the answer is to make this happen more often, rather than less? Because the viewpoint that you’re supporting by arguing against Jamie here is counterproductive to what your post indicates would be a desirable result.
I’d argue that one answer is to make their immigration into this state a bit more like that faced by Hondurans and Vietnamese.
I’m sure an internet search would produce some evidence of pushback, and I happen to know people in various places who are actively involved in liberal politics. Maybe they’re not winning as much as we’d like them to, but it’s not because no one’s trying. And let’s not forget that our first-past-the-post approach to elections often obscures the diversity of political views one can find at the state and local level.
But how do we know this and and how can we tell just by looking at someone?
Yeah, that’s just crap. It’s frustration masquerading as opinion.
If you don’t think that there are not a whole lot of Southerners pushing back hard and applying counterweights, you have no idea of reality in the South.
It’s easy for people who already have the benefit of living in coastal urban areas (I grew up in the South and have lived in a coastal urban area for 8.5 years), who didn’t have to fight that uphill battle in their own communities, to sit around complaining that left-of-center Southerners are not doing a good enough job.
Three points really.
West Virginians after all did elect Sen. Rockefeller, too.
The increasing conservatism in West Virginia since the end of the last century (GWB carried it twice by comfortable margins) has everything to do with the decline of the United Mine Workers in the state.
And for all the history buffs here, West Virgina split from Virginia because the people there would not support the Confederacy.
Yes, and now… I am willing to bet there are lots of Stars and Bars flying, and why exactly does Obama poll so poorly? I’m guessing it’s not because of his administration’s shitty civil liberties record.
Yes . . . but. Per the graph at the link West Virginia’s 2008 performance, while dismal, is not far different from some other rural states, not all of the southern, and quite a bit better than that for states frther south. The overall USA figure is kind of depressing in and of itself.
Link didn’t link.
To buttress my point (election stats from US election atlas dot org):
WV 2004
Bush 56.06%
Kerry 43.20%
WV 2008
McCain 55.60%
Obama 42.51%
Race certainly is part of it, and very much part of the vehemence of RW opposition to the President, but in WV between 2004 and 2008, it dod not move the needle.
There’s just one problem: the EPA rules are costing coal industry jobs. They drive up the cost of generating energy from coal-fired power plants, making them less competitive with natural gas.
At last year’s PowerGen conference, the natural gas industry was talking about the recent and continuing of their sector. They cited three “drivers” for that growth:
the demand driver – greater overall demand for electricity.
the supply driver – new sources of natural gas
the regulatory driver – the regulations the EPA is putting on coal-fired power plants.
This isn’t just the coal industry bitching. The actions of the Obama/Jackson EPA really are hammering Big Coal.
I don’t know what to do about the job losses that entails, but I know that sticking our fingers in our ears isn’t the answer.
Fantasy, of course, but a program to repair the damage done by coal mining would employ a lot of people…
I like the way you think.
Ditto for the fishing fleets.
Restoring the streams destroyed by mountain top removal alone would employ many more people than mining does, at least in the mid term.
You know, given the demographics of the region, a jobs program in Appalachia would benefit remarkably few black people.
So perhaps it’s not entirely in the realm of fantasy.
You quite an idealistic cynic.
Or a cynical idealist, depending on the phase of the moon.
All right, I take back something I said about you once.
As it turns out, you really do seem to understand American politics.
This comment only makes sense if you assume that the coal regulations are arbitrary and have no purpose other than to affect the contest between coal and natural gas. Otherwise, you’d have to suppose that rather than Obama hammering Big Coal it’s Big Coal’s previously unpriced externalities that are hitting home.
No, it doesn’t.
You can recognize all of that and still admit to the fact that the regulations cost jobs.
If you want to argue that it’s worth it, go ahead. I think so, too.
Nonetheless, the EPA’s actions are costing coal jobs.
The word “previously” in this sentence means “before the regulations imposed by the EPA,” does it not? If you think there is some other manner by which the coal industry’s externalities have been internalized recently, I invite you to share it with us.
When the internalization of environmental externalities disrupts a regional job base – even when it is an net gain overall – should we not care about that disruption? Deny it’s happening? Do nothing to alleviate it?
Do nothing! That’s the NAFTA way.
Oddly enough, nobody has trademarked “It’s the NAFTA way” as a slogan.
It’s the sub rasa slogan of the corporatist Dems we keep electing.
Absolutely we should do something to alleviate it. If we want the benefit of regulation, we need to be prepared to pay the costs of it.
Fracking regs should then promote job creation in coal production. Put coal and gas at each other’s throats where they belong. We should use a “level the playing field” message. Fracking is very under regulated and under studied.
Truly amazing and admirable, especially given the weaseling the governor of that state.
It’s not so surprising once you realize the man has 135 vertebrae. No word yet on whether his “limbs” are clever prosthetics or not.
Much credit to Sen. Rockefeller.
On a related note: I have a few friends who argue stridently that President Obama is hated in greater Appalachia because of energy policy/coal. Methinks there’s something else involved, can’t quite put my finger on it. oh, wait! Pick me, I know!
Q.E.D., or what? Not to diminish what is real political courage on Jay Rockefeller’s part, nor to make me feel smart for noticing what is painfully obvious.
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