For anyone claiming there’s been a “war on coal” in the Obama administration, I refer you to the following three graphs. Graph #1 (click to “embiggen”) shows coal mining employment in Virginia is actually UP a bit from the George W. Bush years. Graph #2 (on the “flip”) shows an even bigger increase in coal mining employment in West Virginia during the Obama administration, compared to the George W. Bush administration. Finally, Graph #3 shows the long decline of coal mining employment in Central Appalachia, a large chunk of which occurred under Presidents Reagan and George HW Bush (the trend continued under Bill Clinton, then reversed a bit under George W. Bush and Barack Obama).

Regardless, the reasons for the decline in coal mining employment have essentially nothing to do with a “war on coal.” What HAS caused a decline in coal mining employment over the years: 1) mechanization, which has made the industry far more capital intensive and far less labor intensive than it used to be; 2) a migration of coal mining from places where it used to be mined by humans, operating in coal mines, to highly-mechanized Western and/or mountaintop removal operations; and 3) cheap and abundant natural gas, as well as much cheaper (and inexhaustible) wind and solar power. Put that all together, and what do you get? A decline in coal mining employment in the U.S. over many, many decades. For the true believers in a “war on coal,” I guess what they’re arguing is that this “war” has been waged all those decades, by both Republican and Democratic presidents and Congresses, etc. Is that plausible? Well, no, but many of these are the same people who deny climate science, after all, so were you expecting logic or something?

Source: Growth of U.S. Coal Jobs report

From Progress Virginia: 

( – promoted by lowkell)

A message to people who have bought the Republican line on climate change.

In medicine there’s a saying, “When you hear hoof beats, think of horses not zebras.” Whatever’s going on is far more likely to be the usual than the extraordinary.

But when it comes to climate change, the Republicans are telling Americans not to think horses, or even zebras. They’re saying, think unicorns. Republicans want Americans to believe that the alarm about climate change is based on a scientific hoax.

Republicans used to claim that the science was inconclusive. Fifteen years ago I was on television in Virginia debating the issue against a local Republican official who took that party-line position. But with so powerful a consensus among the experts – 97% – the Republicans have taken the fall-back position that climate science is a hoax.

This hoax would have to be beyond extraordinary. Over the course of history, there have been hoaxes in science – a scientist or two creating false evidence. But if any scientific hoax has involved more than two or three people, I have been unable to discover it.

The scientific studies that show the disruption of the earth’s climate due to human activities have been the work of thousands of scientists, from nations all over the world, conducted over decades.

A scientific hoax of that magnitude is beyond improbable.

If we ought not to believe in this unicorn, is there a horse around to explain the hoof beats?

In fact, there is. We have an industry doing what other industries have done in similar situations. And we have a political party doing what it has done again and again.

The 97% of climate scientists who agree that there’s human-caused climate change also say that it would be irresponsible for civilized societies to fail to take action to avert — or, by this time, simply to lessen – the possible disasters ahead.  Taking action, in this case, means weaning ourselves from our addiction to fossil fuels.

It’s not all that long since science discovered that another powerful industry’s addictive products were having deadly results. That industry worked for decades to sow doubt where there was no good reason for doubt. Eventually, it was revealed that they had known the truth for years.

I’m talking, of course, about the tobacco industry.

But it’s not just tobacco. Whenever industries have discovered that their profits depended on sacrificing other people — like for example, the asbestos and chemical industries — they’ve done their best to hide or deny the truth. Is there an exception?

For the energy companies to protect their profits by persuading millions of people to reject science would be nothing unusual. The stakes may be unprecedented, given the potential catastrophes we may be unleashing, but the choice of greed over caring for the greater good would fit a pattern.

It has been documented for well over a decade that climate change denial is largely funded by energy industries. Like the tobacco company executives all claiming that they did not believe nicotine was addictive or that their products were killing people, oil companies know better than what they tell the public.

(I was told by two inside sources that by the time of the George W. Bush presidency, the oil companies were acknowledging behind closed doors that the scientists’ warnings were correct, but were resolved to maintain their campaign to prevent the American public from knowing the truth.)

Corporations protecting profits even at great cost to the greater good is no zebra or unicorn, but a common horse.

Then there’s the relationship between the politicians and these huge energy corporations, among the richest and most powerful organizations in the world. The Republicans, especially, have a history of doing their bidding,– shouting “Drill, Baby, Drill,” protecting the subsidies we taxpayers still pay out to oil companies long after the original reason for them vanished along with $15-a-barrel oil. And this campaign to discredit the urgent warnings from the scientists that there’s big danger ahead and we’d better start steering our ship away from that iceberg.

No surprise that the Republican Party – no longer the Party of Teddy Roosevelt or even Richard Nixon when it comes to the environment- would choose to protect not the stability of our climate but the interests of the corporations who are their political partners.

There’s a choice. One can believe that we have a huge conspiracy to commit a scientific hoax — bigger by many orders of magnitude than anything ever seen before. Or one can believe that we have powerful corporations and the political party that serves them following a well-established pattern of deception for the sake of profits.

With the issue of climate change now front and center in our political arena, it’s about time Americans approached it from a shared reality. It really shouldn’t be that hard.

Think horses.

Andy Schmookler, recently the Democratic nominee for Congress from Virginia’s 6th District, is an award-winning author, political commentator, radio talk-show host, and teacher. His books include The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution. The archive of Andy Schmookler’s previous postings on Blue Virginia can be found at https://bluevirginia.us/use…



 

Here are a few Virginia (and national) news headlines, political and otherwise, for Friday, June 27.

*Historic gains for gay rights (“Court clears way for Calif. couples, federal benefits”)

*Conservatives vow legislative fight against gay marriage (Right wingers on the wrong side of history as always…)

*In 2009, Snowden voiced contempt for those who leak classified data (Hmmmm.)

*Conservatives’ judicial power grab (“The right using its Supreme Court majority to drag the country back to the Gilded Age.”)

*Corker-Warner Housing Finance Bill an Important Start but Falls Short on Serving America’s Families

*The End of Fannie and Freddie?

*Conservatives threaten to oust Boehner if he allows vote on immigration bill favored by Democrats

*In Va., same-sex marriage rulings highlight split in governor’s race (“Cuccinelli has expressed support for Calif.’s Proposition 8; McAuliffe applauds Supreme Court’s rulings.”)

*Reactions from Virginia leaders on DOMA decision

*Court ruling in Calif. case won’t alter Va. ban on gay marriage – yet (“Virginia gay-rights advocates celebrated Wednesday’s rulings but conceded those decisions don’t endanger the state’s ban on such unions”)

*Historic gay rights ruling blunted in Virginia

*Democrats see Cuccinelli backpedaling with gas statement

*Editorial: The Supreme Court & Virginia Elections (“…the Republican campaigns of Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli for governor, the Rev. E. W. Jackson for lieutenant governor and Sen. Mark Obenshain for attorney general showed no signs of deviation from the lead Cuccinelli and his right wing ideological sidekick Del. Bob Marshall have provided as critics of the Voting Rights Act and opponents of LGBT equality.”)

*The Governor of Virginia’s Rolex is Officially a Problem (It really astonishes me that Bob McDonnell’s political career has been ruined by such petty corruption. But so it has. Amazing.)

*D.C. area forecast: T’storms likely today, weekend far from rain-free but not a washout

*Poll shows D.C. area is hypocritical about ‘redskin’ (“Psychologists have a term for such self-serving intellectual duplicity. They call it ‘compartmentalization.'”)

*Nationals power past Diamondbacks

With all the screaming from Republicans (aka, bought-and-paid-for coal industry puppets) about a supposed “war on coal,” what I find striking is that we’re actually hearing supportive comments from big utility executives, not exactly known as warm-and-fuzzy/treehugger types. For instance.

*Nick Akins, CEO of American Electric Power “said in an interview Tuesday that as long as utilities like his are given enough time to transition to a cleaner fleet of power plants, Obama’s plan can be carried out ‘without a major impact to customers or the economy.’”

*Dominion Resources, “one of the nation’s largest energy companies with 2.3 million customers in Virginia, supports having ‘a comprehensive national energy and environmental policy that balances the nation’s needs for clean, reliable and affordable energy with reducing our environmental footprint,’ said Thomas F. Farrell II, the Richmond firm’s chairman, president and CEO.”

*Dominion Chairman and CEO Thomas Farrell “said his company would work with the administration to promote low-carbon technology. ‘We have put our words into action…By making significant investments that should reduce our CO2 combustion emissions by about a third by 2015 and lower other emissions by as much as 90 percent by 2020.'”

*Farrell in this NBC report is quoted as saying, “with enough time and the right technology…the power industry can make this work.”

*Tom Kuhn, president of the Edison Electric Institute “said in a statement that the country’s shareholder-owned electric utilities want to ensure that carbon-cutting regulations are achievable and will minimize additional costs. Kuhn also stressed that the electric power industry has long understood the importance of addressing climate change and has been a leader in reducing criteria pollutants and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions over the last two decades. ‘We look forward to working with the administration as it further develops its climate plan and with other key stakeholders, including Congress and the states, which will play a critical role in helping to forge workable regulations,’ Kuhn said.”

Also note in this article that the booming wind and solar power industries are VERY supportive of President Obama’s plan, and the nuclear power industry says “we cannot reach our energy and climate goals without the reliable, carbon-free electricity that nuclear power plants generate to power our homes, businesses and infrastructure.” Oh, and the natural gas industry’s pretty happy too, saying “it’s worth noting that President Obama again recognized the benefits of natural gas as an American source of energy that is clean, reliable and affordable.”

To summarize: wind, solar, nuclear, and natural gas all are fine with/enthusiastic about President Obama’s climate plan. So are several major utility executives, including the head of Dominion Virginia Power. That’s just about everybody – with one glaring exception: the entrenched, heavily subsidized (by the taxpayers), polluting-at-no-cost-to-themselves coal industry. And even in coal’s case, they’re desperately trying to claim that “[t]he newest coal-fueled power plants operating today are highly efficient, utilize less coal, and have lower emissions.”

So, really, who are the “dead enders” here, the folks willing to take down the entire planet for a few more years of profits to a few coal companies, and a few more years of contributions to bought-and-paid-for politicians from said coal companies?  Basically, it’s Republican politicians like Ken Cuccinelli (recipient of $528,629 from “Coal Mining/Processing” since 2001, and Mark Obenshain (recipient of $111,820 from “Energy, Natural Resources” since 2002. Hmmm…do ya think that might have anything to do with their hostility to addressing climate change? Anything at all? Yeah, think about that one for a little while and see what you come up with.