This wouldn’t be a problem if West Virginia didn’t have the same number of Senators as New York, Illinois, and California.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) on Thursday said the Senate should abandon efforts – at least for now – to pass a sweeping climate change bill and also urged adoption of his plan that would block some EPA greenhouse gas regulations for two years.
“The Senate should be focusing on the immediate issues before us – to suspend EPA action on greenhouse gas emissions, push clean coal technologies, and tackle the Gulf oil spill,” he said in a prepared statement Thursday afternoon.
“We need to set aside controversial and more far-reaching climate proposals and work right now on energy legislation that protects our economy, protects West Virginia and improves our environment,” added Rockefeller, an ally of the his home state’s coal industry.
He’s basically saying that we can’t do anything about carbon emissions. And he’s appears to be correct.
Every time it’s the same argument: “We can’t now!!! Don’t you see?”
Going all the way back to Ford, and probably before him. We’re so fucked. Well, I’m fucked, as I’m young.
Bastard. His state is a toxic dump thanks to the Coal industry.
Rockefeller needs to have an “out”. Something that will generate jobs for West Virginia in exchange for losing mining jobs. And they need to be good jobs too – not a job at Chick-fil-a – jobs that replace the mining jobs his state is guaranteed to lose.
If Rockefeller had those kinds of assurances he could go out on a limb. But he doesn’t – his state is being asked to take a major sacrifice in exchange for essentially nothing. His voters – many if not most of them with jobs related to the mining industry directly or indirectly – do not want him to do that. They want him to protect their jobs. So he’s doing that. Is that surprising? And yeah that happens to not coincidentally align with the desires of the coal industry as a whole – but that happens more often than a lot of Dems want to believe because sometimes what’s bad for a corporation really is also bad for the labor that works for that corporation.
Yes we need a comprehensive climate change bill, and we need it sooner rather than later (6 years ago would be good). But if it’s going to get done at all someone needs to look at the practicalities of what’s going on on the ground. Has anyone offered up a politically viable way to keep the states that have economies based on mining from imploding and hemorrhaging jobs? I don’t think I’ve seen anything that takes that into consideration. Until that happens all the people in those states are going to see is “I’m going to lose my job if this passes” and they’re going to scream bloody murder at their Congressmen. That’s how the system works.
Great comment. Of course you have the ability to reason and we can’t have that nowadays.
Has Rockefeller suggested anything? How are they going to retrain miners for hi-tech jobs?
I would be surprised if Rockefeller has suggested anything because given my exposure to him he 1) doesn’t seem that bright or forward looking, 2) doesn’t seem to have surrounded himself with bright people with big ideas and 3) has zero incentive to propose something as long as obstruction keeps the jobs in his state and his voters relatively happy.
Rockefeller is too close to the problem to propose an adequate solution himself – he’s at a point where he not only wants to keep the labor side happy by also the corporate side happy. The key to winning over someone like Rockefeller is to drive a wedge between labor interests and corporate interests. As long as they align perfectly his tactic of obstruction is a perfect one. If their interests diverge, then he actually has to make a choice between losing votes or losing his corporate sponsorship.
But how is he helping labor by siding with goons like Blankenship?
I’ve had a little contact with coal mining in IL, and it’s a bit of a stretch to call going down the mines a “good job”. But your point is right on. Workers are always hostage to the interests of employers, no matter how bad those employers are. Even the probability of dying or being an invalid by middle age looks better than a lifetime working for $7/hr. And the pols who want to get reelected are going to work to keep that system going in spite of its toxicity.
There’s no good answer to the dilemma that I know of. We can’t just do massive redevelopment every time obsolete industries go away. We can’t keep putting them on life support when they go against the wider national interest. OTOH, just abandoning the workers is also unacceptable. A true transition out of the fossil economy is going to carry a lot of pain as well as benefit. But how do we triage who receives what?
Yeah, if it were an easy answer we’d be doing it. Although I think there needs to be some thought put into the idea that we “can’t just do massive redevelopment every time obsolete industries go away”. Maybe that’s exactly what we need to be doing in this case. There are different reasons that industries go obsolete – in some cases it’s due to competition and general technological innovation. Subsidizing buggy whip manufacturers makes no sense in this day and age.
But in this case it’s because we as a society have a vested interest in killing this industry off. It’s not because a new niche has opened up to make this industry unattractive – it’s because it has a strong negative impact on our global environment. So maybe this is exactly the kind of situation where we need to pony up some money to do a massive redevelopment of new industries in WV and other coal-dependent states to replace these jobs. I have no idea how to go about doing that, or how to go about doing it in a way that creates long-term jobs for people who were formally doing mining. But if we want to reap the benefits of killing the mining industry in WV, we should probably bear the cost in finding something to replace it.
Absolutely, great comment.
The same is true of oil-dependent states, and the oil jobs are better than the coal jobs.
So basically Rockefeller is holding the U.S. hostage, granted he is far from alone on this issue I am sure. And there is not much we can do. I’d love to be proved otherwise.
Not just the US, but the world.
Anyway, this is why I think our best bet is just to invest heavily into energy with the bill, and use the EPA (for now). If the EPA taxes carbon for the rest of Obama’s term and into his second term, it could be enough time to push these companies into alternatives, making Congress finally act.
What companies? Massey? Now there’s a snowball in Hell if I ever saw one.
Incumbent players in a market rarely transition to new technologies until new entrants eat their lunch. Buggy manufacturers did not turn into automobile manufacturers. Telephone companies originally did not seize on cellphone technology.
Coal and oil companies are not going to be transformed into alternative energy companies nor are electric power utilities (other than municipal systems).
And EPA does not have the power to tax carbon, only to have regulations or to run a cap-and-trade market like they did for acid rain pollution. Any carbon tax will be applied through the IRS and probably leverage off the mechanism for collecting gasoline taxes.
At a minimum, EPA regulations can force investments in cleaner coal use practices through regulations — which is what Rockefeller is fighting. But EPA is going to have to pay more attention to Clean Water and Solid Waste provisions if they do. The spill of toxic residues from a TVA retaining pond should have been a wake-up call to the interaction between clean air technologies and clean water technologies.
Right, because clean coal is a proven winner. It’s being used extensively in ijustmadethiscrapupville.
Does anyone know what the EPA regulations on greenhouse gases will look like? Will they even be ready in two years?
In a recession, threatening to take away jobs in the fossil fuel industry without promises of jobs in the alternative energy industry is going to make a lot of union and non-union miners upset. Same goes for Mary Landrieu’s petroleum workers if they actually voted for her.
At the moment, Congress can’t seem to do anything about anything. Even jobs.
In a recession or not in a recession makes no difference in the politics.
It affects the intensity with which change is fought. And the electoral risks of embracing change. While prosperity doesn’t reduce the money power driving politics, it does provide some people power latitude for politicians. But only if folks in the old industry see the possibility of higher wages in the new industry.