This is just a casual observation, but I think Sen. Rand Paul is misdiagnosing the problem in several areas:
Paul, during a visit to Northern Kentucky Friday morning, said he will support whoever is the Republican nominee, even if it’s Donald Trump. He said it’s better than supporting Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Paul criticized Clinton’s comments she made while campaigning in Ohio that she will “put a lot of coal companies and coal miners out of business.” Those words will likely reverberate around the state in the next few months and could hurt Clinton.
“I think we never get the candidate we exactly want unless you’re the candidate,” Paul said. “Think about it from this perspective. I’m from Kentucky, and Hillary Clinton recently said she would put coal miners out of business, and she would put coal companies out of business.”
Paul ended the press conference after that and didn’t take followup questions.
People aren’t asking Rand Paul if he’ll endorse Donald Trump because they’d prefer to be the nominee themselves, and they aren’t really suggesting that they’d prefer Sen. Paul, either.
More than that, though, it really doesn’t matter who the next president is as far as the future of the coal industry is concerned. Eleven years ago, we had the same argument over tobacco farming. Mitch McConnell fought hard for the state’s tobacco farmers, getting them generous terms in the final settlement, but he didn’t think the tobacco industry could be saved and preserved.
If McConnell and Paul want to help coal miners, they’ll get serious about helping them achieve a similar transition away from an unhealthy industry. Maybe Clinton will help them out with that.
livery stables before that . . . and . . . and . . .
I seem to recall a time back in the 70s or so when the notion became widely rejected that every “job” was sacrosanct regardless the ecological harm it caused.
I’m at a loss to explain how we allowed it to make a comeback.
To the point that it’s, if not quite gospel, at least something even most Dems seem to feel required to genuflect before. Immensely harmful.
Gosh, if only Rand had been around Kentucky in the late 19th and early 20th century to stand up for the Owensboro Wagon Company, they would still be cranking out those buggies and farm wagons.
No doubt, some asshole Northerner Democrat like Woodrow Wilson said he would put them out of business, so he crushed them like a big.
The transition away from coal is proceeding at a much slower pace than coal mining workers are losing their jobs and their communities are becoming impoverished.
What a horrible general election it will be with “you’re fired” vs. “put a lot of coal companies and mine workers out of business.”
Tobacco:
On the fields:
What happened to those 170,000 farms and the farmers?
Tobacco farmers are switching to other crops. Here’s a quote from one article I found:
“Bloomberg cites the example of Julian Rigby, a former Alma, Ga., tobacco farmer who three years ago switched to growing stevia. He tells Bloomberg the switch was easy. After making some modifications, he says he’s been able to grow stevia using the same planters, harvesters, drying barns and loaders.”
Hemp, too.
Three years ago? Well, somehow that farmer managed to hold onto his land and equipment long enough for stevia to become a viable crop. It was banned in the US in 1991 and only some extracts of it were approved in 2008 and not approved in the EU until 2011.
So, what about the other 169,999 farmers? Obviously some large percentage sold out to larger, corporate entities. And some managed to find a way to transition to other crops. But did we, collectively, facilitate a transition to keep small farmers viable and reduce the shift to monoculture farming that’s not good for the ecosystem?
I’d say no. But that is perfectly inline with neoliberalism’s Social Darwinism. IGM,SY
Kentucky has dramatically fewer farms and much less land devoted to farming, according to the latest snapshot by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Between 2007 and 2012, the Bluegrass State had the greatest percentage decrease in farmland of any state in the country, the Census of Agriculture says.
Read more here: http://www.kentucky.com/news/business/article44495472.html#storylink=cpy
They left for the factories in Dayton and Chicago and Detroit. Urbanization met farm mechanization and surplus farm labor. Maybe you could provide some insight on the modern left and their revanchist fantasies about subsistence farming.
I grew up on the family farm, and bluntly, fuck that noise.
Odd that industrial farming is picking up tips from low input subsistence agro-ecology then. They are not as dismissive as you.
Havana, the capital of Cuba, small and medium scale urban farms employing agroecological methods produce around 90% of the fresh produce consumed within the city. Productivity data compiled on these small hold urban farms found their efficiency ratio to be 15-30, while industrial farms in the UK and USA average 1.5, meaning in some instances these small farms are 20 times more efficient than industrial farms. Not only are these systems more efficient, but they are more resilient too, with polyculture and agroforestry systems proving far better equipped to withstand extreme climate events than monocultures. The challenge for those championing agroecology is how to upscale these successes to compete on the level of industrial farming. – See more at: http://www.britishecologicalsociety.org/blog/2013/10/17/mainstreaming-agroecology-is-this-the-future
-of-farming/#sthash.kE3BRnnR.dpuf
I assume there is some secret transition plan for all those health insurance company workers when single payer finally passes.
Shouldn’t be secret and most definitely should be part of any plan to transition to single payer. That’s the only responsible thing to do. First pass, make them all public employees.
And they laughed at Dukakis for telling bankrupt corn farmers to grow belgian endive instead! (BTW he was right)
Consolidation. Instead of many small independent family farms, you’ll find a much smaller number of agribusiness owned factory farms.
Hmmm. Wouldn’t count on much from Hillary.
“More than 13 million people received cash assistance from the government in 1995, before the law was passed. Today, just 3 million do.”
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/04/the-end-of-welfare-as-we-know-it/476322/
This echos RidgeCook’s comments last week. They are writing off West Virginia and Kentucky.
Writing off WV worked out real well for Gore in ’00 didn’t it?
(Only one WV DEM primary poll –Sanders 57% and HRC 29%. But that likely GE red state won’t count because it’s too small, too rural, and too white.)
West Virginia’s three congressional districts have partisan voter indexes of R+14, R+11, and R+14 respectively. While (Bill) Clinton won the state in 1996, he also won 379 EVs total, so it was hardly a major factor is his victory.
The point I was trying to make is that , sure write off WV, but what about Va, KY, southern Ill. Ind. Wyoming, etc…. All the coal producing areas and their connected services and industry; whose votes may needed in close races. Like Va, where maybe 1/4 of the state is directly or indirectly connected to coal. (mining, railroad, ports). Do you just kiss them off? Southern Ill?
Anyway, what Sen. Paul failed to mention is that KY power plants are burning more coal than ever, just not KY coal. Ill and western coal is cheaper. And as profit driven, shareholder owned utilities, they are going to buy the cheapest. That is the basis for the switch to natural gas, not any environmental reg 25 years out.
Re: tobacco
I’m also involved in Southside Va./NC border. Martinsville, Danville, Eden, South Boston (and the counties behind them) all relied on textiles, furniture and tobacco for their economies. 2 were destroyed by trade deals, the 3rd by court cases against Big Tobacco. When people say you can transition coal communities like you did tobacco regions of states, don’t understand that those towns and whole areas have the proceeds from the tobacco settlement to slowly shift and try to revitalize those towns. I mean millions and millions of dollars, all administered by the state with the associated politics. (Tobacco Commission money). And its still coming in because the job isn’t finished and it may take a couple of generations.
Who is going to pony up the money for a large portion of the MidAtlantic US, plus parts of the Mt West and MidWest? The potential is there, but would require real structural changes in politics and land ownership. I mean scramble the Monopoly board type of changes. Is the area worth spending the time and money? I think it is, certainly as much as spending billions of dollars for water to support a huge population in a desert that was never meant to have that population. If the real cost of water was imposed, or even partial, then some of it could be diverted to other areas of the nation that needs it.
But that’s me, as I live in a temperate rain forest and don’t understand the desire to live in a desert. I can certainly see how some would resent spending money in Appalachia just as I resent spending money for raising cotton in Arizona. Does the economic benefit out weigh the costs? Don’t know but if even some of that money was spent in other areas, you might be surprised by the result.
R
Not quite on track with the facts;
BTW the population of KY is, 4.413 million (2014).
Almost half the electrical generation capacity from coal has been closed in the last few years.
Not only isn’t the coal being mined like you suggest, it isn’t being burned either like you suggest.
It might make a good sound bite for a dishonest right wing politician to spout to their truly uninformed base, but the facts on the ground beg to differ.
By contrast here are the auto workers in Kentucky currently
Ford…… 8,500 Louisville 2 plants
GM…….. 1,000 Bowling Green 1 Plant
Toyota…. 7,000 Georgetown 1 Plant
total 16,500, more people than mining coal, making a better wage.
Coal in KY has been declining for decades, much of the coal burned in the state came from out west. But NG is cheaper so coal plants are being converted.
That’s all correct, but who do you think is going to fund the communities, schools, social services, drug treatment, unemployment for 30 counties (according to Wikipedia) when coal is completely shut down and the economy of that region is destroyed? So those higher wage jobs and more diversified economies can look for higher taxes and shifting of funding away from their area into Eastern Ky. State budgets are 0 sum. Take away revenue from one area, it has to be replaced by revenue from others.
And don’t depend on it coming from Washington, its going to come from Frankfort. How long will that last?
R
Those populations came with the railroads and the coal industry, and will leave with them.
IOW become gypsies like during the Dust Bowl.
This has been going on for decades, while Hal Rodgers did diddle y-squat.
Now you want Matt cut every thing for the poors to further his entitled rich friends Bevin to actually care about the fate of these people,
As Steve Tyler says;
DREAM ON……..
don’t want to acknowledge. Cheap natural gas through fracking is what has basically turned coal into a dead industry walking. It killed the industry in 10 years.
Now does this mean I think fracking is a good thing? Heck no but it also means that I have to acknowledge that fracking is a big reason coal based energy is quickly on its way out and that means we have to ramp up renewables to replace fracked natural gas unless we want coal to make a come-back.
This is quite correct. Head of American Electric Power said they make a profit when the buy gas even before they burn it. Natural gas prices have been lower than coal for the last several years though the fracking glut may be coming to an end.
As we live in a corporate profit driven, shareholder value optimizing world, if the cost of Nat Gas continues to rise and they increase the efficiencies of scrubbers, you may see an increase of coal for elect. generating. Which would impede the weaning of Appalachia off coal economies.
——————
A good way to compare relative costs from different energy sources is to put a dollar amount per set amount of energy contained in that source, dollar per million btu.
“Coal and natural gas generation shares over the past decade have been responsive to changes in relative fuel prices. For example, particularly low natural gas prices throughout much of 2012 following an extremely mild 2011-12 winter led to a significant rise in the natural gas generation share between 2011 and 2012, often displacing coal-fired generation. With higher natural gas prices in 2013 and 2014, coal regained some of its generation share. However, with a return to lower natural gas prices in 2015 favoring increased natural gas-fired generation, coal’s generation share dropped again.
Environmental regulations affecting power plants have played a secondary role in driving coal’s declining generation share over the past decade, although plant owners in some states have made investments to shift generation toward natural gas at least partly for environmental reasons. …..”
http://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.cfm?id=25392
“EIA estimates the delivered coal price averaged $2.23/MMBtu in 2015. Forecast prices are $2.18/MMBtu in 2016 and $2.20/MMBtu in 2017
The Henry Hub natural gas spot price averaged $1.99/MMBtu in February, a decline of 29 cents/MMBtu from the January price. The February price decrease reverses gains in the Henry Hub price in January. Warmer-than-normal temperatures through most of the winter, record inventory levels, and production growth have contributed to sustained low natural gas prices. Monthly average Henry Hub spot prices are forecast to rise slowly beginning in May 2016, but they remain lower than $3/MMBtu through December. Forecast Henry Hub natural gas prices average $2.25/MMBtu in 2016 and $3.02/MMBtu in 2017. “
https://www.eia.gov/forecasts/steo/report/prices.cfm
Won’t we be selling liguified nat gas on the open market for export now?
That is another way to soak up the glut. National Security/NATO policy wants to get Europe an alternative source besides Russia; but the port and storage facilities haven’t finished . One in Texas just completed, ones in Texas and Maryland under construction
But conversion plants and ships are needed. Fact is, the US was unprepared for the huge gains in NatGas and be able to distribute it worldwide so it got dumped on the domestic market. That will end in the next few years. Also I think you will see a push back as to the environmental consequences to fracking. No one knows what’s pumped into the ground. Trade secrets…especially the weak state environmental agencies. I personally saw rows of Haliburton tankers with fog rolling off them at night. Lord knows what hellish brew they had chilled and waiting to be pumped into local coal seams to release the natural gas. And pumped into the local ground water. This waving of the Natural Gas flag will come back and bite those in the rural areas; and they will have to live with the results so everyone can feel good while having a powered iPad and sipping an over priced coffee.
———————
“Five large-scale U.S. liquefaction facilities, necessary for conversion of natural gas to LNG, are under construction with a projected capacity to export more than 12 percent of U.S. natural gas production in 2020. According to representatives from these five facilities, their liquefaction capacity has already been sold mainly through 20-year contracts and their customers are responsible for transporting the LNG to export markets.
Based on estimates from these liquefaction facilities, transport of the full capacity of these liquefaction facilities will require about 100 or more LNG carriers.
Currently operating LNG carriers are nearly all foreign built and operated. LNG carriers have not been built in the United States since before 1980, and no LNG carriers are currently registered under the U.S. flag……
http://www.maritime-executive.com/article/us-needs-100-lng-ships-30-years
Sorry but even in KY they are converting coal plants to NG, or closing down old coal pl;ants and building new NG plants.
I understand that plants are still switching, but you must understand; natural gas prices are artificially low right now. They have been for the last few years. There is an international market for liquefied natural gas (LNG). In the next couple of years, the infrastructure for efficient export of LNG will come on line in the US. When that happens, gas suppliers will have the option of selling their product worldwide. So Ky Power will be competing with the Germans or Koreans for the gas to fire their boilers. And if the Koreans or Germans offer more money, guess who will get it?
The problem is US utilities are bound by state boards as to rates, so they will be in a double bind. Raising gas prices and limited amount they can raise rates. Since these utilities are not social agencies but profit driven organizations whose leaders are under legal obligation to maximize shareholder value, they will be faced with a pair of equations.
cost of keep burning gas=X
cost of converting back to coal+environmental add ons+cost of coal = Y
As long as X remains lower than Y for a sustained period, they will stick to Gas. When it shifts, and the directors have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholders not to purposely lose money, then they will go to Y.
Is that a good or bad thing? That’s unimportant. Its the world we live in. Have the govt take the utilities over and they can follow whatever social policy you want. Should we be pushing harder for wind and solar, sure and we are. But they will never supply 100% of US needs for the foreseeable future. That leaves nuclear and fossil fuel. Pick your poison.
R
Kinder Morgan, through its Tennessee Gas subsidiary, is currently trying to get through the regulatory thickets to run one of two proposed pipelines through Massachusetts in order to export natural gas to Canada for conversion to LNG to be shipped overseas. Part of the proposal is for local ratepayers to pick up some of the costs. As you may imagine, this is not going over well with consumer advocates.
http://www.wbur.org/2016/02/25/natural-gas-massachusetts-pipelines
State regulators have limited jurisdiction, since the pipeline is primarily subject to FERC, and are caught between a GOP governor who’s for more gas imports and various citizen organizations bitterly opposed, plus a Democratic Attorney General’s office that’s not about to roll over for the governor. They can decide whether KM can collect construction costs from Massachusetts ratepayers.
I didn’t talk about KY employment but its a mistake to just rely on direct employment numbers for industries like coal. There are 12 eastern counties in KY. Everyone who lives in those counties are directly or indirectly effected by coal mining and employment. Businesses, county funding, relatives, etc… Plus the retirees whose pensions and healthcare are tied to the health of the industry. Even if they are farming, where they buy their clothes or eat dinner or fund their schools is effected by coal industry. Particularly in small towns. So its easy to say, “close them down, only a few will be hurt” That’s what they said about the textile industry in the south, and after 20 years, many, many small towns and cities haven’t recovered.
Va’ economy is also very diversified but 9 or 10 counties of the “Mountain Empire” portion are, once again tied directly and indirectly to coal. Plus the railroad center of Roanoke and the export loading facilities around Portsmouth spread coal’s economic reach across the state. Areas around Roanoke and the Norfolk regions have been Democratic strongholds and have helped (along with DC area) have helped turn Va purple. If all of a sudden your candidate is threatening to close the RR shops in Roanoke and the load outs along the coast, that won’t help keep VA.
R
Your government (and could be Dem or Republican) will be selling off your water for pennies to friendly bottlers who will ship it off to those wealthier desert states…
Can’t raise property taxes or have a state income tax, but can always raise fees and costs to the poors.
Now there is an idea, “Water straight from the Appalachian Mts. with all the heavy metals from mine run off your body needs.”
Actually the water in the streams is 100 times better than when I was growing up. The rivers used to run black and now have lots of wildlife around them. Damn Nixon’s 1972 Clean Water Act!
I’m not kidding about being in a temperate Rain Forest. Next month or so all the mountains will be covered in phosphorescent Green and we’ll have daily showers during the summer. Occasional flooding after a week of steady rain is a problem.
R
Madison Avenue will pitch it as “clean pure water from mountain springs”. look what they got away with on tobacco!
Kentucky shows how devoid of ideas the GOP has become. They have been losing mining jobs for 20 years and now its time for the GOP to point finger/blame. There is nothing else to do when you believe government has no role where the free market will do its magic.
Politifact
How can that be when President Obama didn’t submit his/her(HRC) proposal to oust Gaddafi to Congress for a vote (because it wouldn’t have passed)?
Something, something. …
Yeah, and there really were snipers gunning for her as she landed at that airport in Bosnia. Politifact will return rating HRC statements as “False and mostly false” sometime after she wins the nomination but at the latest by January 19, 2017.
eh
Truth is a sometime thing with the Clintons.
That Politifact story reads to me as exactly that — “Eh….”
Sanders clearly didn’t “vote for regime change,” but did vote for the no-fly zone. He seemed to support regime change in the interview, as long as it didn’t turn into a “sustained” involvement. He was basically waffling. He seemed to know what we were getting into.
To be honest, I think they’re both complete garbage on foreign policy.
Clinton’s far too hawkish and still views the world in an old way (“Why are we allies with the Saudis? Because, like, we always have been”). I’d hoped Obama breaking away from some of that would do her well, but alas, she’s still an idiot.
And Sanders doesn’t seem to really think anything about foreign policy.
Obama has broken away from very little of that. Obama has been an accomplice in a tragic war that Saudi Arabia is waging on Yemen. He actively supported efforts for regime change in Syria.
You likely didn’t see it on any lefty blogs but Obama admitted recently to avoiding bombing ISIS targets early on in order to put pressure on the Iraqi government. More social engineering abroad, just by the so-called lefties this time.
More like a no time thing.
Across the river here in Ohio, Ohio Edison just got permission to raise electric rates to keep two coal fired plants operating. Remember that moderate John Kasich put a hold on a law that forced electric companies to acquire 12.5% Of their energy portfolio from renewable sources and to reduce consumption by 25% by 2025. He said it was just too expensive for the utilities to have to deal with. But coal, apparently, no problem.
There are a LOT of “friend of coal” license plates/bumperstickers in this state(Ky), usually plastered on SUVs and “big wheel” pickups LOL..what they don’t realize is that natural gas killed coal. Virtually all the power plants are converting…it’s cleaner and doesn’t involve all the transport/storage/emission problems that go along with burning coal. Sorry, losers, Obama didn’t do it. It’s just progress. Now, if you want help re-training your workforce, you’d better vote Democrat, ’cause the GOPers sher ain’t doin’ anything if they can hep it. Oh, wait, you idiots just elected a Teabagger for Guv. Good luck on that.
Enjoy it while you can. As I discussed up thread, gas prices are artificially low. Its been consistently higher than coal on the spot market since Jan. for the first time in years. Once the export facilities come online, Ky Power will be competing with the Asians and Europeans for gas, highest bidder wins. Once the price of gas goes higher than coal + environmental controls, you will see a switch over again.
R