“This week,” he wrote, “we secured critical funding for
clean coal research and development as part of the 2019 appropriations bill
that was passed by the House. America, and the entire world, will be reliant on
fossil energy for years to come. Research will help us to be a leader in
innovation, developing technologies that allow us to utilize our resources more
cleanly and efficiently. Not only were we able to block attempts to cut this
critical funding, we were able to increase it by $58 million.”
I sent him the following email in response:
This country has been
researching “clean coal” technology since I was a newspaper reporter in the
1970s, and probably long before that, yet coal is still not “clean.”
Here's an idea:
Instead of blowing more millions of dollars on useless research into the “clean”
burning of environment-killing fossil fuels, why not take a few of those
mountaintops that were blown away by strip mining and install some windmills
and solar panels up there.
You
know...mountaintops? Where the sun shines and the wind blows?
Have you looked at the
statistics on jobs in the coal industry versus jobs in the alternative fuels
field? Coal jobs down, wind and solar jobs up. It's clear that you're backing
the wrong horse.
I eagerly await his reply.
Meanwhile, the third annual U.S. Energy and Employment
Report, a comprehensive look at energy jobs in America, shows that “clean
energy is the driving force behind job growth in this sector,” according to the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC).
“These jobs – like installing utility-scale solar energy
projects, operating windmills, and manufacturing energy efficient equipment and
appliances – pay more on average than the national median and are located all
across the country from the coasts to rural communities and in the Rust Belt,”
the NRDC said.
The latest report shows the country had nearly 3.2 million
Americans working in wind, solar, energy efficiency and other clean energy jobs
in 2017, outnumbering fossil fuel jobs by a factor of 3 to 1.
“The report is further reaffirmation that political leaders
looking for ways to stimulate the economy should back policies that grow the
clean energy sector, which also can help solve other problems in their communities
by reducing unemployment, lowering harmful power plant emissions, and improving
public health,” the NRDC said.
A different chart using data from the U.S. Department of
Energy shows energy sector power generation employment in 2016 as follows:
 |
| Click to enlarge |
Solar – 373,807
Wind – 101,738
Coal – 86,035
Natural gas – 52,125
And that was two years ago. As stated above, the trends show
fossil fuel jobs declining even further and alternative fuels employment on the
rise. Of course, these are only facts trying to break through the smog of the
current administration’s fact-free environment. Facts like these don’t exist in
faux-president Donald Trump’s alternate game-show reality.
Or in the minds of Rep. David McKinley and other West
Virginia politicians who believe the only way to be elected in these hills is
to bend a knee at the feet of the all-powerful coal barons who have raped this
state virtually since its inception. Heaven forbid any of them would look
beyond our faded past to see the future that could lie ahead.
After all, we’ve never done it that way before. Why in hell
should we start to do it now?
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