Coal Industry Amenable To Transition to Green Energy
From this piece on the coal industry:
Coal country is in free fall and is pleading for help from Washington. That’s why the largest union in one of the dirtiest industries is broadly backing President Joe Biden’s $2 trillion green infrastructure package — an ambitious plan that has also won support from climate activists.
“Anybody who would not accept jobs where jobs are desperately needed is making a horrendous mistake,” Cecil Roberts, president of the United Mine Workers of America, the country’s largest mine workers union, told CNN Business on Tuesday.
Biden’s American Jobs Plan calls for improving the nation’s infrastructure and shifting to greener energy in a bid to simultaneously address inequality and the climate crisis.
“We’re for infrastructure. We’re for jobs. We’re for moving manufacturing into coalfields. We’ll work the president on that,” said Roberts, who has known Biden for decades.
It’s a tragedy that the concept of environmental responsibility is a deeply partisan issue, which is what makes this so refreshing.
If American society can begin to move in this direction, it’s entirely possible that, within our lifetimes, we’ll see a robust economy aimed at preventing environmental collapse, and that no one with any sense at all will oppose it. The United States will be booming like never before, leading the world to a path of prosperity and sustainability, with the prospects of peace thrown on top.
Of course, we have a long way to go before any of this becomes real, as it bucks the trend of ever-increasing divisiveness. The last few years have brought us to a point that anything favored by Democrats is automatically rejected by Republicans.
Perhaps the reverse is also true, but that’s unclear. One has to think that a Republican-sponsored bill to phase out fossil fuels or remove lead pipes would be met with a deafening round of applause, but that’s something of a pipedream anyway.
In any case, let’s be grateful for this piece of extremely good news.
