It is - idiocy promulgated by an all-too-powerful idiot. An idiot who lives in some kind of fantasy world ever looking back trying to drag us into his irrational dream. It was brutish, dirty, life-shortening work. Coal miners lived like serfs - and died like them. And, I think Dear Leader is going to find that it is no longer work Americans long to do. We have spent yers trying to repair the damage done by strip mining... and he would bring that back. Instead of getting America ready for the world that IS, he wants force us into a dead society and economy we are much better off having laid to rest. He is fixing the wrong problem.
I went to college with a woman who had been married to a strip miner. She said he would buy the mineral rights to a plot, strip it, and then declare bankruptcy to avoid having to restore the land. He would then form another company, buy his own equipment back at the bankruptcy auction, and start stripping another farm.
That’s a very good point. I think workers in the UK had a different set of workers who would be considered a labor aristocracy. I think in the United States it would be unionized workers at firms where the USA had a comparative advantage like the auto industry for example.
British coal miners were likely a labour aristocracy during the 19th century because the UK was a major coal exporter, and after World War II because coal mining had been nationalized.
Re “And, I think Dear Leader is going to find that it is no longer work Americans long to do.”
No, Dear Leader will find nothing of the sort since“to find” entails “to search” which entails “to care”—but Trump only cares about harassing and harming his critics, the country and the ecosystem be damned. He is not an idiot, he just loves to hurt things—so when he’s not preying on children with Epstein he’s groping or raping adult women or cheering on mob violence or ordering masked men to abduct Mexican families or telling Pam Bondi which of his critics to indict, and so on. Raping the whole country—its laws and democratic norms—is the biggest thrill of all.
So why then do Republicans let him rampage? They’re afraid he’ll hurt them too.
DT's handlers are giving him focus. He is following their suggestions - most of the time - and enjoying the pain he is imposing & the grift as well as supposed adoration he is receiving.
Without his handlers, he would more obviously be a bumbling idiot.
Also true of logging and milling here in the Pacific Northwest. When I was growing up It was common for fathers to have only a few fingers left if they weren’t killed outright. And like coal mining, technological advances meant replacing labor with machinery. Some of the men who were treated like serfs and their descendants long for the days of shabby company towns and life threatening work. After listening to them, some seem to be nihilists while others miss having someone else in charge of their lives. They don’t like the responsibility of planning their own lives.
I grew up in logging country and we went through the same process, just earlier than coal miners. My mother spent part of her childhood in Cordova Alaska, where the main employer was the Kennicott Copper Mine. It closed in 1938. Abandoned silver and gold mines are common here in the West. So I’m not blaming miners, I’m just noting generations of experience with the resource extraction industry. Lots of people here in the West have similar experiences and we had to move on to other places and industries.
I wonder if part of the problem is that dangerous physically-demanding work produces a society of tight-knit patriarchal families? Many people who remain in such areas after the industries have died, are likely trapped there by their family obligations.
If you kept your wits about you, life in a town like Grisdale, far into the Olympics, was worth the effort. But it was work in a clean and scenic environment, not a coal dust choked tunnel down in hades.
I also grew up in a timber and fishing town on the coast of Oregon. Both industries were lucrative in the 50's, but offered little in the way of healthcare or retirement benefits and both were dangerous. This was long before there was a push to send kids to college, so a young person graduating high school was likely as not to follow their father or brothers into one of these industries.
My father worked in a timber-related industry, was a member of a union and had benefits. We were one of the few families with dental insurance and I still remember many of my classmates having rotted teeth. My father also regretted not being able to use his GI benefits to attend college and was adamant that I would go to college and not follow him into his industry, which he could see was declining due to over cutting and foreign competition. The result for me, at least, was transformative.
The idea of ramping up coal production is both anti-science and anti-economic, and will do little to bring back more "good" jobs. Burning coal to generate heat that can produce electricity is insanity when a more direct and environmentally sound way to produce electricity can be accomplished through renewables. It is no coincidence that the state of Texas, famous for its oil production, is also a leader in renewable power generation.
He doesn't care to fix problems per se! Everything he does is about ego, seeking to project an image of power - including one of the virility he wishes he had. His gangsterism, lust for money, "Department of War," ordering around Generals and Admirals, "you're fired" mindset, wreaking of havoc on the government and democratic institutions, grasping impotently for a Nobel peace prize, are all a part of it for this totally amoral (and stupid) man.
During Biden, when Manchin (WV) was somebody who needed perks to cough up on a vote, coal was a thing. For Dems, anyway. But now Wyoming is the biggest coal producing state, with 40% of US total; and with two GOP Senators.
So Trump/GOP's current crush on coal could simply be due to the outsize influence of a handful of coal state Senators.
It goes back to before Biden. Obama for instance was an advocate for "clean coal", an oxymoron if ever there was one, and the DOE funded it vigorously. Inevitably it failed because Mother Nature totally disregards politics and religion.
It should also be noted that solar and to a lesser extent wind can be decentralized, which is one reason why the oligarchs hate them.
Obama had very good instincts about energy and the politics about it 🙂but he kept us in the Paris accords because he believed in climate change as a real threat…
He was certainly better than Trump and perhaps better than Biden, but a Carter he ain't. The clean coal thing was an example of the apparent predilection of the centrist Democrats for offering something for everyone, never mind the contradictions. He also torpedoed the Copenhagen agreement, setting us back a decade. Just saying.
Biden's administration did do a lot toward green energy, which Trump and minions are attempting to undo. Of course, some of that undoing is hurting the red states.
Not "something for everyone", just an example of Coal Broker Manchin punching above his weight, and luring people to his houseboat on the Potomac for a reminder of how thin the margins were in the Senate...
We love our decentralized solar and battery system, which right now is charging our EV and powering our house. Independence is wonderful. There’s more than enough commercial rooftop space, if we pair solar with batteries, to power a significant chunk of American energy demand.
I've had rooftop solar for 12 years, unfortunately predating battery storage, but still very valuable over time. In the summer, the panels feed clean electricity back into the grid, decreasing (a bit) the burden of energy generation.
George Bush was the first President to fund major clean coal projects. Obama continued funding some of those projects. Remember what was going on in the economy when Obama continued that support. It was a fiscal stimulus program at that point more than an embrace of coal. Based upon his 8 years in office I believe Obama embraced clean energy more than clean coal. You're right about Carter though. To bad Reagan came along and made pollution cool again.
Aubrey, you may be right. I see it more as sticking to beliefs Trump acquired as a young man. Once a an idea or a concept is set in his "brain", fact, science or common sense will not cause him to revise his "thinking".
not even sure that's it. He is such a cartoon figure, he probably saw "Giant" at an impressionable age, and decided oil guys were the pro wrestlers of corporate america. Just like his hatred of windmills is because a few "spoiled" his view from a scottish golf eyesore...
West Virginia turned anti-Democratic Party back when Democratic Senator Robert Byrd broke with the Party. Byrd opposed the Senate handing its responsibility to declare war to Bush, who lied us into the disastrous Iraq War, accusing the Party of "spinelessness". He was right.
Interesting point. There are so few coal miners any more, how they vote is of minimal impact. And they are now corporate and vote Right anyway, probably. What's Trump up to? Coal is a dogwhistle. A subliminal charm to the working class, designed, as you say, to con the working class itself.
On the surface, the statement is, of course, absurd.
However, "Coal Miners" functions as an archetype. Reference to an archetype is a dogwhistle that resonates with Trumpism's constituency. Mostly - but only mostly - white, less economically endowed, male, rural, less educated, and hence less secure, individuals.
The politically-oriented programming that demographic is exposed to inculcates that it's macho to risk your life in a physically demanding job (coal miners and blacklung; Ice Road Truckers and wrecks; crabbing for the Deadliest Catch in the Bering Sea and drowning, and so on). If you yourself do something like that, you're in the club. If not, there's always the Walter Mitty effect.
Politically, the archetype effect in advertising is part of the reason the masses can be induced to vote against their best interests by politicians who are willing to lie systematically.
Economically, the effect can be summed up by reference to the "Marlboro Man", association of risk with macho occupation.
Actually, from what I recall, the deal made with Manchin to pass the IRA, was mostly over a gas pipeline, and natural gas is what has also caused coal to finally decline in use.
So, we got our climate reform bill in the IRA, but in order to get it we had to give him his pipeline.
From Google search :"Senator Joe Manchin tied his support for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to a side deal that included federal action to ensure the completion of the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline. The pipeline was completed in June 2024."
From Reuters:
U.S. Senator Manchin unveils energy bill that some Democrats slam
So, Biden could only get his climate bill, IRA passed, that had all those green subsidies in it by giving Manchin is pipeline.
Was it worth it, absolutely. Sadly, Trump and the GOP are undoing the IRA.
The most important thing to point out, however, is that demand for coal has declined over the last 20 yrs and it is not coming back and as Krugman points out, jobs have been largely automated, as well.
The same is largely true for oil. As a global commodity, it "seems" to perhaps be leveling off or plateauing regarding demand (at least that seems reflected in the prices) and the price per barrel is low and not at a level that would inspire many new wells and countries like Saudi Arabia have excess capacity they do not use to keep prices from declining further, due to excess supply.
Then you have China investing in green energy, as well, although they have already been making great strides in their transportation sector for years now. China makes affordable EVs and even India has a cheap EV brand, as well.
Sadly, our whole future of our nation under Trump is starting to get a "rustbelt" feel as others might now be able to surpass us in green energy - which is a big and growing industry and should be supported.
Other nations will now be that "shining (and clean green) city upon a hill" while we are covered in coal dust, well if Trump got his way anyway, but business invest where the growing global demand is, and it is not in fossil fuels.
Manchin's a realist. So was Robert Byrd. West Virginia was a Democratic stronghold for a long time. I think WV's politics was (and is) a bellwether for the Democrats at large.
Byrd's book "Losing America" is highly critical of Senate Democrats' "spinelessness" when they handed over the Senate's warmaking power to Bush II, who lied us into the disastrous Iraq War against Saddam and his imaginary WMDs.
Today's widespread disgust with the spineless and leaderless Democrats that have ridden the Party down to the point it no longer has a practical role in the federal government was predicted by West Virginia.
The Senate was 50/50 with Harris as a tie breaker. I do not see giving Manchin his pipeline as spinless but the only way to pass the bill, which must have been done via a budget reconciliation to avoid a filibuster, one might assume.
As far as Bush's disastrous wars, the whole sentiment of the nation was behind Bush in the beginning because we were attacked and it was easy to spin the fear as extending to Iraq since people were on edge even though Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11.
You can blame Dems if you want, but then you also need to blame the GOP, Bush, and most of America as well as the spin on WMD, but one wonders how much of that was just bad intel fueled as relevant out of leftover fear from 9/11 and how much was really anyone being intentionally misled. I do not know if it was simply jumping the gun on intel when they needed more info. or lies and distortion
Based on my personal view, I do not see Dems as spineless, simply doing what they think is best based on the information that they have.
For example, for the last CR, Schumer had information that Trump wanted the shutdown to excuse more spending cuts and to help close more agencies, and this is still the same info today.
It is hard to have leverage using a shutdown when the other side actually wants one.
This time, in addition to pressure to simply "do something" from the left the minority leadership also had some demands for passing the CR this time, over healthcare, an issue that did not exist prior to the passage of Trump's simple majority Budget Reconciliation or BBB that was passed after the last CR (continuing resolution).
No Dems voted for BBB. (Some seem to confuse the BR used for BBB with the CR that Schumer let pass, they are not the same thing).
So, I see Dems as doing all that can be done. Others seem to fault them for things they do not do that in reality either are not possible or would do no good like the last CR they let pass. Had they shut down over a simple CR, it still would have not prevented Trump's BBB that was passed with a simple majority and was not subject to any filibuster rules.
The same could happen this time as well. Even if the Dems got what they wanted in this CR standoff, the GOP could undo it all in their next simple majority BR or even use a BR to fund the government and save the day from a shutdown (from what I gather trying to research if a CR would have to come first, I come up with, a no but others can tell me how I am wrong if they have other info.)
Regardless, this is probably the only way the Dems will get the public to realize that it was the GOP who caused their premiums to rise when they get their new bill later this year from the Healthcare Exchange and see a large increase that they may not be able to afford.
I agree with the natural gas pipeline; that was not my point. The spinelessness quote was from Byrd's fight to get Democrats to not cave in to Bush II on the second Iraq War. Natural gas produces less greenhouse gas per unit of energy than coal and is cheaper in the long run. Manchin is a pragmatist as well as a realist. A Cassandra, perhaps. He saw where the Party was headed.
And yes, Democrats are doing all that can be done, which is next to nothing. There are no leaders, if you ask the public. Democratic approval is rock bottom. Schumer deserves the odium he is held in by a majority of Democratic constituencies.
The shutdown is either going to be a debacle because Dems don't back off, or a nightmare windfall for Trumpism in hastening the declaration of emergency forthcoming.
Winter is coming, as it were. Blue Cities are being occupied by the military, which is being urged by Trump and SecDef to be aggressive to the point of violence. He's prepping for midterms. Same with the gerrymandering issue.
Trump can be absolutely certain that a Democratic House will impeach him as soon as practicable, so retaining control of the House at midterms is paramount. Assuming there are midterms, and that they are not corrupted, and his obvious debility of age does not incapacitate him.
Manchin should have seen the writing on the wall and known he would not be re-elected. He could have done the right thing and been a great environmental hero instead of the villain that history will now show.
Apparently he did; he's not running for re-election. That's not to say he wouldn't be re-elected. WV is historically Democratic (Senators and Governor, if not President) and the people are primarily Democratic in spirit. It's the Party that's moved away from them, and, considering they have no functional role in the three branches any more, it's pretty plain that the Party has moved away from the nation as a whole. It is what it is.
Manchin is no longer in the Senate. He did not run for re-election in 2024. The coal miners union begged him to vote for Build Back Better, which would have opened up resources for miners with coal-related disease and would have provided job training assistance in other fields.
West Virginia elected a Republican as its replacement for Manchin.
Interestingly, the latest "coal mine" in Wyoming is not for coal - it's for rare earths for (gasp) permanent magnets for wind turbines & BEV electric motors (and other advanced electronics).
The discovery of Wyoming's Powder River Basin coalfield (which is both cheap and easy to mine, and low in sulfur meaning less noxious air pollution) was likely a big factor in stalling the advance of nuclear power in the US after 1970.
True, it’s all about fossil fuels and fossilized stupidity in which the Republicans, led by the fossil fuel companies, think climate change is a hoax (it’s not,) ignore all scientific evidence of climate change, and think they can go on and carry on business as usual. The rise of sea levels, inundation of cities and towns built upon land adjacent to the oceans, gulf, or rivers, and the increased destruction by storms made more severe by climate change may cause them to rethink this, but I have my doubts about it.
I think many elected Republicans realize that climate change is real. But they have to contend with the implicit (or maybe explicit) threats as well as continuing to be elected.
A problem in the US is that fixed elections every 2 years means one is continually in campaign for the next (Trump influenced) primaries & (general) election.
Good point, and with our electoral system oiled with big bucks, representatives and senators have to spend their time dialing for dollars instead of actually legislating.
Idiocy yes. But not a random idiocy. There's a weird mixture of ideology and cynicism here. But this is certainly a way of stringing along a portion of the public with one more version of "we will give you back the good old days that those evil liberals stole from you."
Should add that I recently read a small book about Hannah Arendt who studied the rise of totalitarianism. She says that one of the key contributors to its rise is the ability to tell people a unified set of lies about the source of their problems. It doesn't matter that they're all lies because they all fit together to tap into the same anger.
The GOP Idiocy isn't random. It's a systematic program to destroy the US, reduce the US standard of living, and eliminate the US role in running the international trade system. What's going on now is beyond anything Russia or China could have thought up, they just don't have the imagination. Historians will be absolutely baffled trying to explain this in the future.
The Republican program is this: rich, white men are entitled by God to rule over the masses. When people know their place, order is established. Taxes are seen as confiscation of individually owned property, and thus are an assault on personal liberty.
Now since a political party advocating "know your place" is not going to be popular, other tactics were required. Namely split the masses against each other by exploiting differences of gender, race, region, religion and sexual orientation. Nixon was first, but he blew it, and the lesson learned then was never again and never give in. Reagan was the affable front man for nasty people like Buchanan, Cheney, Atwater and Rumsfeld. The Republicans had it all going for them with Bush I. Winning the Gulf War, etc., but in late 1991 and 1992 there was a recession. Clinton came out of nowhere to win the Presidency. A shocker. That meant that Gingrich had to take the gloves off, and the culture wars began in earnest, and the lies, lies, lies. Using a propaganda network called Fox "News". Trumpism started way back then with the impeachment, then Bush II was appointed, but he blew it, and, OMG, a black man was elected, and Trumpism got a massive booster shot. Donald just took advantage of what had already been started, and he's done it better than anyone before to split the masses, confuse them, distract them and all the while taking the money and power for himself and his billionaire buddies, ie, the new oligarchs. Now his job is to make sure people know their place so order is established in accordance with his and the oligarchs' wishes. Which is why he goes after universities, the media, Democrats, unions, government workers. These are institutions and people who are inclined to challenge the justice of an "orderly" society run from the top down. Such is not going to be allowed, and once the masses are beat down into sullen subservience by a combination of exhaustion and fear, elections won't matter, whether they are held or not.
I think this was the original plan. But then the Trumpenstein monster broke loose from his chains, and escaped from the lab. He is now running loose sowing chaos and destruction. This is more like a Greek tragedy were the gods destroy the GOP by giving them what they thought they wanted.
I have to wonder if there was an uprising when the first cars were invented, with people wanting to keep horse-and-buggy as transportation instead? Somehow I don't recall ever hearing about this much over-the-top denial of the need for progress. On the other hand, moving forward to cars wasn't the best idea we've ever had either!
Historical precedents points in a different direction. The arrival of cars spurred oil and gas industries to undermine trollies and buses. Little oil became Big oil by destroying what we now recognize as environmentally superior transportation options. Big oil is now just continuing its program of self defense at the cost of public health.
Cars became cheap enough especially after WW2 for the masses to afford them. Veterans bought houses in the former countryside on the GI Bill. Cars led to greater mobility and it was on demand so time and space were shrunk although physical distance increased. After growing up in the Depression in a crowded apartment, perhaps with the extended family, and then going to war, who wouldn't want the space of a house in the suburbs? It wasn't until the Sixties that the downside of "sprawl" became apparent. That was Lady Bird's big thing. There's no doubt that oil and gas and the automobile industry promoted cars over streetcars and trains. But it is not a hard sell to promote personal, on demand transportation.
If you examine the way big oil “promoted” cars over other transport options I think you’ll find that public preference for personal transport had little to do with it. Oil used its financial might to target and destroy alternatives to automobiles.
Apparently some US states temporarily had similar laws but quickly repealed them. My grandparents were born during the transition to internal combustion and would occasionally tell humorous stories about “the olds” of their youth who had trouble making the transition.
Perhaps this is folktale, but there are said to be instances where a farmer passed by a "horseless carriage" mired in the mud or with a flat tire and advised the hapless owner to "get a horse!" Change, especially technological change, is hard.
Those new fangled automobiles and electric streetcars allowed cities to be livable and healthy. Horses needed stables, needed fodder, and then they pooped. They were filthy. As transportation they were inefficient and labor intensive. Yep, the horse industry was put out of business but a new business arose in its place.
There was definitely a lot more resistance than you'd expect, though not from nostalgia over carriages as such. But in the early days of cars, people took pedestrian fatalies a lot more seriously.
There are stories from back in the day about sheriffs responding to vehicular homicides by rushing to the scene and having to protect the driver from angry mobs raring to lynch the "car murderer."
Thanks Teddy and all... guess my knowledge of history has a lot of holes! I sure wish we hadn't ended up normalizing 'car murders'! Maybe driving, walking and biking would be a bit safer now!
Maybe it was the fascination (mostly by men) of MACHINES that made noise.
In any case, there was evident advantages to cars that turned a 2 hour trip into 10 minutes. Especially if hauling goods was no longer hard physical exertion.
Note that brand name cars started in the 1500's in Italy, with the Rio.
What Ford changed in the US was assembly line mass production, patterned after the clothing industry.
It was the way we did the "cars" thing that was the bad idea. They've become a god, in that we witness our own human sacrifice to "cars": forty thousand lives a year, lost in the most frightful ways. It's a "god" by definition if inordinate human sacrifices are made to it.
It's a case of the morbidly rich controlling the interests of 340 millions people. Bring back the progressive tax brackets of the 1950s and 60s that created a booming middle class where democracy meant one man had one vote, not one dollar one vote, that it is today. It's time for the middle class to turn on the morbidly rich who have soaked them.
Yes. Then the purveyors of "what aboutisms" jump on your comment to try to divert blame from Trump and the Republican Congressional Reps and Senators who are destroying more public lands and subsidizing pollution..
It is most certainly not idiocy; it is clever way to keep people voting against their own interests. It uses an emotional "grabber": jobs. It assigns the blame to hated "liberals" while hiding the responsibility of large corporations. It takes advantage of lazy mainstream media: whenever Trump said "coal" and "jobs" in the same sentence, the media could have summarized what PK just wrote. It does not take an a Nobel in eco to understand this!
Of course it's nonsense. Even backward SC, where I live, is removing coal burning power plants. The one a few miles from my home is not just closed. It's completely gone and its cooling ponds have been returned to the marshland they historically were. I am breathing more easily, literally. We have no brownouts and even power failures due to big storms are rare and usually power is on within an hour.
I keep running “Idiocracy” through my mind. Do we want the US to be like Coal Country? I grew up with people from the “hollars” of Kentucky and W. Virginia. And, I remember too well the smog and dirty buildings.
I have read that his hatred of wind power is because of the windmills near his Scottish golf course that he says ruin the view. No more complex than that. Coal is probably money.
Time for a little Black humor? Freedom fighting and frolic versus authoritarian oppression(I.e., the Demiurge) is forthcoming via Pynchon’s “Shadow Ticket.”
“ China has no wind power” , DJT Another blatant lie or another example of complete ignorance. Either one should disqualify Mr Trump for the office of President of the United States.
During his February speech to both houses of Congress, Trump said that two companies were planning to build a two trillion dollar natural gas pipeline in Alaska. The Republicans got up on their feet and cheered. I did the math. A two trillion dollar pipeline would circle the Earth 4 times.
Wind turbines drive Trump, not whales, “a lil’ batty.” One stop on his retribution tour was Scotland, where wind units mar Trump’s view from his golf course. He refocused his rage on Rhode Island. There a court reversed Trump’s decision to halt construction on a huge, nearly completed wind farm. Solar and wind energies are cheaper than fossil fuels, but Trump dutifully dances with big oil and gas industry donors.
How about this: Trump’s toxic tangle of tax tricks, tribalist tirades, and truthless theatrics threatens tolerance, tramples the tired, and turbocharges tyranny. You're welcome!
I've figured out Trump. He's the greatest contrarian of common sense, science and all social & cultural values. For every established fact, Trump has a contrarian viewpoint. Stop searching for objective reasoning and logic behind Trump's contrarian positions.
He's a spoilt, unlearned, unsophisticated, malevolently narcissistic man-child who is terrified of people discovering how empty and barren and clueless he really is.
The solution for most such people is to avoid them, but Trump was made into a glamorous megafauna by a rich family and access to the New York media. Unfortunately too many people believed the hype and didn’t recognize him as the jerk they avoided in their hometown.
(Glamorous megafauna is a term used to distinguish trophy animals like elephants, large cats, and antlered ungulates from ordinary animals)
We, as a species, need to evolve. We just passed into a new millennium! It is abundantly clear we need to leave horse power behind if there is any future. We also need to leave behind most of what the DjT regime stands for; racism, misogyny, hypocrisy, unbridled cruelty and economic inequality. It is time to break new ground in social order and plundering the Earth, especially fossil fuels, has no place in any sustainable future.
However, I'm not convinced we CAN evolve ourselves out of the burgeoning problems we have set ourselves. Our technological prowess and fascination with power will get the better of us, and will eventually prove to be our downfall. I genuinely look forward to a time when humans are "reduced" once more to living in tiny communities in huge forests, working with their hands, building simple shelters, and listening with joy to the bird-song while they forage for food.
Old fashioned coal miners had tough jobs, died young. Black lung was a terrible way to go. I get a certain nostalgia for a way of life long vanished. But the people who lived it got out as fast as they could.
Historically, coal mining communities were very close-knit and supportive of all in the community. The miners themselves were very proud of their jobs and their status in the community. Several ground-breaking (pun only half unintended) sociological studies were made of such communities in Britain and the US.
In Britain in the '70's, Thatcher's hatred of the miners' refusal to tip their hats to her and to defer to her anti-union policies led to thousands of police being sent in to quell the riots which ensued, and led eventually to the crushing of the miners' spirits and of their industries (this came at a time of a glut in world coal production, and collapsing coal prices). Miners would not have "got out fast" of their own accord - they were clubbed down and deprived of employment, and had to leave to find work elsewhere.
And we see that in the US, corporations and more efficient machinery and production methods led to the miners having to leave their communities to feed their families.
There was an earlier history in the U.S. of “Coal Wars” (google it) that lasted for from ~ 1890-1930. What Thatcher et al. did to British coal miners pales compared with the violence used against U.S. coal miners throughout Appalachia and in Colorado.
I hadn't heard of this at all - thanks for the heads-up. Not at all suprised by the actions of the mine owners and their agents, which is not to say that I'm not horrified by their tactics and oppression of the miners and their families.
I recently visited the Ludlow Massacre site near Trinidad, CO enroute to New Mexico. That was an informative trip, which revealed much brutal history and quite a few current curiosities, as well.
“coal mining communities were very close-knit and supportive of all in the community.”
I suspect the longing for these kinds of communities is behind our current problems. These communities might even be demographically integrated If people feel personally connected and that their lives are meaningful. Instead we are increasingly isolated and treated like horses during the transition to internal combustion engines.
I'm a retired boilermaker, Local 455. I went back to school once I was vested and became a Main Frame Programmer. TVA told us some 35 years ago they were getting out of the coal business and they gave their reasons. The number 1 reason was cost. It coat too much to mine the coal, ship it by rail or water to a plant that has to burn the coal in order to make steam to power a turbine. On top of all that you have to build and maintain the plant at billions and then when a boiler is started it has to run whether you need electricity or not so most of them ran 16 hours a day for no reason just in order to be able to have power the 8 hours a day it was needed. It takes anywhere from 8 to 24 hours just to start one of these monsters. Total efffiecentcy numbers suck, 25% to 35% at best. To date Colbert, Widows Creek, Paradise and Bull Run are gone. These were not just shuttered, they were wiped from the face of the Earth. Coal will never be back and Trump can mine all the coal he wants but he has not place to sell it. The idiot. Poor West Virgina kept believing that coal lie and voted away any chance that they might get new industry in their state to help support their families. The fact is, Technoology can't be stopped. History has proven this time and again and either you get onboard or you get left behind.
I just love the bit about how they have to operate 24/7 because it's so hard to restart. Just think it how expensive it must be to restart a solar operation every morning when the sun comes up!
Note to any MAGAts who might see this: This is called sarcasm and is sometimes thought to be funny. Just wanted to make sure you understood.
LOL, I watched the sun come up and I did notice the cost, $0.00 though I don't think MAGA would ever except that. They still can't get their heads around the fact that in Blood Red Texas almost 30% of their power comes from wind. Only an idiot would think that there is not a Republican involved in all that profit.
You can buy them books but you can't make them read.
I recently read somewhere (forgot where) that when people do not have a positive expectation of the future they will start to long for an (imaginary, idealised, facts-be-damned) past.
The rise of anti-woke seems to be (at least partly) an expression of that.
Facts won't help much fighting that trend. Giving people hope will. But their hope seems to have been mostly squashed by an economy where a small percentage of the people eis very rich and the future of the rest has been going nowhere. For instance, if education becomes unaffordable, how can you get hope from investing in your future? If housing has become unaffordable? If everyone's income except for the superrich stalls or even decreases in real terms?
Automation — both the physical kind (Industrial Revolution) and the mental kind (IT Revolution) and its combination (such as robots doing a lot of industrial tasks) — is now doing another boost of replacing human labour with machines. The humans that suffer long for a past where their work — their life — was meaningful.
Woke (addressing the facts about slavery, gender, etc.) is not so much the problem, nor are immigrants. But they have become a proxy in many human minds for change that had many negative consequences. Unless the inequality is addressed, the dreams about the past will remain powerful enough to fuel those that represent that anger in politics. But 'money' will defend itself against such change, as these too are humans who strongly believe their model is best for all. 'Human intelligence' is a phrase that should be used with extreme caution.
The comment about replacing human labor takes me back to a show I saw as a kid, in which Edward R Murrow (yes, that long ago!) spoke of the problems from "automation" replacing workers. It stuck with me for a long time.
Brian Merchant wrote an interesting read about the Luddites called "Blood in the Machine". He also has a substack on what this wave of automation is doing to jobs specifically. Worthwhile.
I used his insights on a piece on the jobs effect of Generative AI (ChatGPT and friends) last year. https://ea.rna.nl/2024/07/27/generative-ai-doesnt-copy-art-it-clones-the-artisans-cheaply/ . His writing has made the penny drop for me that while 'artificial *general* intelligence' may (quite definitely, really) not be on the cards, the same thing *may* happen as what happened more than 200 years ago: the introduction of the category 'cheap' (in both senses) in a large part of what used to be 'artisanal' human work.
I tend to see the Industrial Revolution as a series of interlocking revolutions. Pre-industrial was an energy revolution (e.g. windmills in The Netherlands, something described by Wallerstein in "The Modern World System III" as one of the early foundations for modern capitalism, 16th-17th century), the physical automation revolutions (cotton industry in the late 18th, early 19th century — generally what people have in mind as the start of the IR), an energy revolution (oil produced an energy glut), a science (chemistry mostly) revolution, a digital revolution. All typical S-curves, but sometimes boosting each other, e.g. the energy revolution enabled extremely energy-intensive chemical processes. Maybe the financial revolution has a place there too.
Generative AI may (but the jury is still out as the economic model isn't clear yet) do something like that. Or, as we can also see, it may largely cover us in 'AI-slop', see recent Harvard (I think) study on 'workslop' such as unreliable but cheaply AI-produced summaries that leave sorting the mess to the consumer of such 'workslop'. Both, I guess.
As the granddaughter of a coal miner who came to Butler, Pa. early in the 20th century to escape conscription by the czar's army during the Russo-Japanese War, and the daughter of a potential coal miner who enlisted in US Navy in 1939 to escape the mines, and who wound up escorting convoys across the North Atlantic before the USA's entrance into WWII, and who said it was preferable to working in the mines, I get it. I myself attended college in West (by God) Virginia and saw my fair share of mountains with the top blown off. I have become an environmentalist in large part because of that background. Having one's views "spoiled" by wind turbines is annoying and the concern not solely about whales and birds, but more significantly in my view bats, is a reality, I agree, but it is a price that is paid for clean, renewable energy. Perhaps science can find a way to better protect to those mammals (whales and bats) and birds if research could be allowed to continue.
According to the American Bird Conservancy, roughly 1 million birds are killed each year by windmills. The studies vary on this, but that's the suggested upper bound.
But... Guess how many are killed by collisions with large glass buildings. The estimates range up to 1000 times more. (Of course, windmills are tall structures, so there's some overlap of data.)
Maybe we should ban high rise buildings. Since Trump appears to be such a bird lover, he should get right on that and tear down the properties that have his name on them.
You do have a great point that further research should be done to minimize animal deaths from all avoidable causes. I doubt that will happen soon. That doesn't transfer even more wealth to those who absolutely do not need it, except to boost their already troubled egos.
My wife's maternal grandparents lived in the Pennsylvania coal country. They were very proud of the fact that they worked "at" the mine and not "in" it.
I do think you will find any dead whales. Actually windmills stimulate sea life around them as they are creating safe corners for sea life. Not sure about the birds, but that could be limited too. Birds are not stupid.
“What it’s really about is culture war. Trying to bring back coal is all about owning the libs. And if it damages the environment, well, from MAGA’s point of view that’s a plus.”
Actually Trump’s policies are starting to make sense. We had to incur tariffs because of all the countries screwing us; you know like the McDonald Islands inhabited by Penguins.
So by Trump’s logic, coal will revive our energy independence goals. And as long as windmills cause cancer, and Tylenol causes autism, I believe Trump finally has a winning economic and energy formula.
I just can’t wait for Trump to give us all free access to those miracle MedBed’s, then all will be right in the world, and the affordable healthcare issue will finally be solved….:)
Actually, a fax machine can't be hacked/viewed like email....but, I believe today faxes are even scanned over the wireless net, as landlines aren't being repaired. There's a flower shop in Oil City, PA that still has a landline. The conversation with its owner was a real joy, as I ordered flowers from her for a grave. She comments that Azerbaijanis come visit every year, as they're both places where the first oil wells were drilled around the US Civil War era. They (Azerbaijanis) have money & most of us are on welfare, she said. If she wanted to retire, she'd find no one willing to buy the building nor the business, with empty storefronts surrounding it, she said
I argue (a lot!) with my hub over the impact of GWBush, and how bad he was in comparison to Trump. The differences between them are more about style than substance, IMHO, and the fact that ‘stage 2’ cancer arrives before ‘stage 4’. Mountain top mining, a euphemistic term for transforming Appalachian mountains into dead rubble, was totally reckless and employed far fewer people than traditional mining. Hard core Republicans love destroying the environment for fun, profit and culture war point scoring … what else is new??
At least you remember Shrub. I’m very concerned about the cognitive abilities of MAGAs who don’t remember W at all and keep blaming Obama for Katrina, the Great Recession/financial meltdown of 2007-09, and the Iraq War. I wish the media would interview some neurologists who might explain why some brains forget eight years. It isn’t entirely partisan too because many of us who voted for Clinton and Obama remember the downsides to their administrations. They haven’t gone AWOL from our memories.
Ah, but cutting off mountaintops in Tennessee left a lot of excavated places where one could find fossils! I went on a couple of weekends while I was working at Oak Ridge in 1962, on parties organized by a couple of scientists there. (Not nuclear types, except when investigating the innards of cells(not the jail type of cell).)
Tennessee is a beautiful place , but I won’t be going back there anytime soon. Not spending one nickel in any red state, and so glad that I put a lot of money (for me) into my humble little house during the Biden era, because I see a lot of ‘staycations’ in the coming years. Love my new solar panels too.
The Blaenavon Ironworks closed in 1902. Coal is not the future. It is not the present. It is barely the past. It is the distant past, replaced by oil and then nuclear, which are now being replaced by solar and wind. It's not a fax machine. It is a horse and buggy.
The Tennessee Valley Authority alone has 24 coal-fired electricity generating units, located at four locations. It's not distant past there. They do have plans to transition the Kingston TN plant to natural gas in a few years, but I'd bet those plans got shredded after DonnyJon's announcement.
According to this it's 4. Not 24. The most recent coal plant was built in 1973. The operational life of a coal plant is between 40 and 50 years. So, the newest plant at the TVA (your example, not mine) is past its operational life. The other three are on average twenty years past their operational life. The TVA also has 11 times as many hydroelectric dams (44) as coal plants (4). So, the regular past, not the distant past. I stand corrected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_operated_by_the_Tennessee_Valley_Authority
4 coal plants. 24 burning units. The two webpages do not conflict each other. There are no dates for individual burning units. Three of four plants are still 20 years past their operational life. Everything built since 1973 at the TVA (your example) is gas, nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, or wind. That is not the future. That is not the present. That is the past. Yes, they are still operating. Coal plants are still operating. Perhaps I was too flippant saying it was the distant past. But it is definitely the past. It is a fax machine in the age of email. Running coal plants (or really anything) beyond their operational life is not a recipe for the future. It is a recipe for a disaster.
I regularly write pro-clean energy actions people can send to their federal or state legislators at Your Dose of Climate Hope! https://climateactapp.substack.com/
This attempt to steer the nation back to using coal is just another case study in idiocy.
It is - idiocy promulgated by an all-too-powerful idiot. An idiot who lives in some kind of fantasy world ever looking back trying to drag us into his irrational dream. It was brutish, dirty, life-shortening work. Coal miners lived like serfs - and died like them. And, I think Dear Leader is going to find that it is no longer work Americans long to do. We have spent yers trying to repair the damage done by strip mining... and he would bring that back. Instead of getting America ready for the world that IS, he wants force us into a dead society and economy we are much better off having laid to rest. He is fixing the wrong problem.
I went to college with a woman who had been married to a strip miner. She said he would buy the mineral rights to a plot, strip it, and then declare bankruptcy to avoid having to restore the land. He would then form another company, buy his own equipment back at the bankruptcy auction, and start stripping another farm.
Sounds like the kind of sh** Private Equity firms like to pull. Ol' Diogenes would have a real job of it today - looking for an honest man.
Warren and Bernie?
That's standard operating procedure for miners. The same stunt was used by gold miners in Colorado.
Strip robber right? 😡
Another horrible sociopath!
Coal miners in the US were never a labour aristocracy in the way that they were in northern England.
That’s a very good point. I think workers in the UK had a different set of workers who would be considered a labor aristocracy. I think in the United States it would be unionized workers at firms where the USA had a comparative advantage like the auto industry for example.
British coal miners were likely a labour aristocracy during the 19th century because the UK was a major coal exporter, and after World War II because coal mining had been nationalized.
They weren't so much in the early 20th century.
Re “And, I think Dear Leader is going to find that it is no longer work Americans long to do.”
No, Dear Leader will find nothing of the sort since“to find” entails “to search” which entails “to care”—but Trump only cares about harassing and harming his critics, the country and the ecosystem be damned. He is not an idiot, he just loves to hurt things—so when he’s not preying on children with Epstein he’s groping or raping adult women or cheering on mob violence or ordering masked men to abduct Mexican families or telling Pam Bondi which of his critics to indict, and so on. Raping the whole country—its laws and democratic norms—is the biggest thrill of all.
So why then do Republicans let him rampage? They’re afraid he’ll hurt them too.
DT's handlers are giving him focus. He is following their suggestions - most of the time - and enjoying the pain he is imposing & the grift as well as supposed adoration he is receiving.
Without his handlers, he would more obviously be a bumbling idiot.
The main reason they are fighting tooth and nail against the Epstein files release. Don’t worry guys you have no soul to sell 🤨
“It was brutish, dirty, life-shortening work.”
Also true of logging and milling here in the Pacific Northwest. When I was growing up It was common for fathers to have only a few fingers left if they weren’t killed outright. And like coal mining, technological advances meant replacing labor with machinery. Some of the men who were treated like serfs and their descendants long for the days of shabby company towns and life threatening work. After listening to them, some seem to be nihilists while others miss having someone else in charge of their lives. They don’t like the responsibility of planning their own lives.
I wish you wouldn’t blame the miners. Most have little or no experience of any other life. It is frightening to face such an immense change.
I grew up in “coal country”.
I grew up in logging country and we went through the same process, just earlier than coal miners. My mother spent part of her childhood in Cordova Alaska, where the main employer was the Kennicott Copper Mine. It closed in 1938. Abandoned silver and gold mines are common here in the West. So I’m not blaming miners, I’m just noting generations of experience with the resource extraction industry. Lots of people here in the West have similar experiences and we had to move on to other places and industries.
I wonder if part of the problem is that dangerous physically-demanding work produces a society of tight-knit patriarchal families? Many people who remain in such areas after the industries have died, are likely trapped there by their family obligations.
If you kept your wits about you, life in a town like Grisdale, far into the Olympics, was worth the effort. But it was work in a clean and scenic environment, not a coal dust choked tunnel down in hades.
I also grew up in a timber and fishing town on the coast of Oregon. Both industries were lucrative in the 50's, but offered little in the way of healthcare or retirement benefits and both were dangerous. This was long before there was a push to send kids to college, so a young person graduating high school was likely as not to follow their father or brothers into one of these industries.
My father worked in a timber-related industry, was a member of a union and had benefits. We were one of the few families with dental insurance and I still remember many of my classmates having rotted teeth. My father also regretted not being able to use his GI benefits to attend college and was adamant that I would go to college and not follow him into his industry, which he could see was declining due to over cutting and foreign competition. The result for me, at least, was transformative.
The idea of ramping up coal production is both anti-science and anti-economic, and will do little to bring back more "good" jobs. Burning coal to generate heat that can produce electricity is insanity when a more direct and environmentally sound way to produce electricity can be accomplished through renewables. It is no coincidence that the state of Texas, famous for its oil production, is also a leader in renewable power generation.
He doesn't care to fix problems per se! Everything he does is about ego, seeking to project an image of power - including one of the virility he wishes he had. His gangsterism, lust for money, "Department of War," ordering around Generals and Admirals, "you're fired" mindset, wreaking of havoc on the government and democratic institutions, grasping impotently for a Nobel peace prize, are all a part of it for this totally amoral (and stupid) man.
During Biden, when Manchin (WV) was somebody who needed perks to cough up on a vote, coal was a thing. For Dems, anyway. But now Wyoming is the biggest coal producing state, with 40% of US total; and with two GOP Senators.
So Trump/GOP's current crush on coal could simply be due to the outsize influence of a handful of coal state Senators.
It goes back to before Biden. Obama for instance was an advocate for "clean coal", an oxymoron if ever there was one, and the DOE funded it vigorously. Inevitably it failed because Mother Nature totally disregards politics and religion.
It should also be noted that solar and to a lesser extent wind can be decentralized, which is one reason why the oligarchs hate them.
Obama had very good instincts about energy and the politics about it 🙂but he kept us in the Paris accords because he believed in climate change as a real threat…
He was certainly better than Trump and perhaps better than Biden, but a Carter he ain't. The clean coal thing was an example of the apparent predilection of the centrist Democrats for offering something for everyone, never mind the contradictions. He also torpedoed the Copenhagen agreement, setting us back a decade. Just saying.
Biden's administration did do a lot toward green energy, which Trump and minions are attempting to undo. Of course, some of that undoing is hurting the red states.
Not "something for everyone", just an example of Coal Broker Manchin punching above his weight, and luring people to his houseboat on the Potomac for a reminder of how thin the margins were in the Senate...
You're right to point out the 'horse trading.'
We love our decentralized solar and battery system, which right now is charging our EV and powering our house. Independence is wonderful. There’s more than enough commercial rooftop space, if we pair solar with batteries, to power a significant chunk of American energy demand.
My concern is that solar and batteries may be currently unsustainably cheap as a result of Chinese dumping.
I've had rooftop solar for 12 years, unfortunately predating battery storage, but still very valuable over time. In the summer, the panels feed clean electricity back into the grid, decreasing (a bit) the burden of energy generation.
George Bush was the first President to fund major clean coal projects. Obama continued funding some of those projects. Remember what was going on in the economy when Obama continued that support. It was a fiscal stimulus program at that point more than an embrace of coal. Based upon his 8 years in office I believe Obama embraced clean energy more than clean coal. You're right about Carter though. To bad Reagan came along and made pollution cool again.
You are giving Donald too much credit for thinking.
The coal industry has the felon pedo Don in their pocket.
Aubrey, you may be right. I see it more as sticking to beliefs Trump acquired as a young man. Once a an idea or a concept is set in his "brain", fact, science or common sense will not cause him to revise his "thinking".
not even sure that's it. He is such a cartoon figure, he probably saw "Giant" at an impressionable age, and decided oil guys were the pro wrestlers of corporate america. Just like his hatred of windmills is because a few "spoiled" his view from a scottish golf eyesore...
More likely he is already counting the bribes from the coal company oligarchs.
And the votes from coal miners who Trump keeps conning into thinking he cares about them.
just like they were conned by mansion in backward WVa
West Virginia turned anti-Democratic Party back when Democratic Senator Robert Byrd broke with the Party. Byrd opposed the Senate handing its responsibility to declare war to Bush, who lied us into the disastrous Iraq War, accusing the Party of "spinelessness". He was right.
Interesting point. There are so few coal miners any more, how they vote is of minimal impact. And they are now corporate and vote Right anyway, probably. What's Trump up to? Coal is a dogwhistle. A subliminal charm to the working class, designed, as you say, to con the working class itself.
Coal miners are "real men"?
That's a very deep question/statement.
On the surface, the statement is, of course, absurd.
However, "Coal Miners" functions as an archetype. Reference to an archetype is a dogwhistle that resonates with Trumpism's constituency. Mostly - but only mostly - white, less economically endowed, male, rural, less educated, and hence less secure, individuals.
The politically-oriented programming that demographic is exposed to inculcates that it's macho to risk your life in a physically demanding job (coal miners and blacklung; Ice Road Truckers and wrecks; crabbing for the Deadliest Catch in the Bering Sea and drowning, and so on). If you yourself do something like that, you're in the club. If not, there's always the Walter Mitty effect.
Politically, the archetype effect in advertising is part of the reason the masses can be induced to vote against their best interests by politicians who are willing to lie systematically.
Economically, the effect can be summed up by reference to the "Marlboro Man", association of risk with macho occupation.
Places like northern Alabama. Trumpie as can be, and at least used to have coal mines.
Actually, from what I recall, the deal made with Manchin to pass the IRA, was mostly over a gas pipeline, and natural gas is what has also caused coal to finally decline in use.
So, we got our climate reform bill in the IRA, but in order to get it we had to give him his pipeline.
From Google search :"Senator Joe Manchin tied his support for the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) to a side deal that included federal action to ensure the completion of the Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline. The pipeline was completed in June 2024."
From Reuters:
U.S. Senator Manchin unveils energy bill that some Democrats slam
By Timothy Gardner
September 21, 2022
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-senator-manchin-releases-permitting-bill-speed-energy-projects-2022-09-21/
Fossil fuel side deal for U.S. climate bill slammed by green groups
By Nichola Groom
August 3, 20229:25 AM PDT
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/us-senator-manchin-releases-permitting-bill-speed-energy-projects-2022-09-21/
So, Biden could only get his climate bill, IRA passed, that had all those green subsidies in it by giving Manchin is pipeline.
Was it worth it, absolutely. Sadly, Trump and the GOP are undoing the IRA.
The most important thing to point out, however, is that demand for coal has declined over the last 20 yrs and it is not coming back and as Krugman points out, jobs have been largely automated, as well.
The same is largely true for oil. As a global commodity, it "seems" to perhaps be leveling off or plateauing regarding demand (at least that seems reflected in the prices) and the price per barrel is low and not at a level that would inspire many new wells and countries like Saudi Arabia have excess capacity they do not use to keep prices from declining further, due to excess supply.
Then you have China investing in green energy, as well, although they have already been making great strides in their transportation sector for years now. China makes affordable EVs and even India has a cheap EV brand, as well.
Sadly, our whole future of our nation under Trump is starting to get a "rustbelt" feel as others might now be able to surpass us in green energy - which is a big and growing industry and should be supported.
Other nations will now be that "shining (and clean green) city upon a hill" while we are covered in coal dust, well if Trump got his way anyway, but business invest where the growing global demand is, and it is not in fossil fuels.
Manchin's a realist. So was Robert Byrd. West Virginia was a Democratic stronghold for a long time. I think WV's politics was (and is) a bellwether for the Democrats at large.
Byrd's book "Losing America" is highly critical of Senate Democrats' "spinelessness" when they handed over the Senate's warmaking power to Bush II, who lied us into the disastrous Iraq War against Saddam and his imaginary WMDs.
Today's widespread disgust with the spineless and leaderless Democrats that have ridden the Party down to the point it no longer has a practical role in the federal government was predicted by West Virginia.
The Senate was 50/50 with Harris as a tie breaker. I do not see giving Manchin his pipeline as spinless but the only way to pass the bill, which must have been done via a budget reconciliation to avoid a filibuster, one might assume.
As far as Bush's disastrous wars, the whole sentiment of the nation was behind Bush in the beginning because we were attacked and it was easy to spin the fear as extending to Iraq since people were on edge even though Iraq had nothing at all to do with 9/11.
You can blame Dems if you want, but then you also need to blame the GOP, Bush, and most of America as well as the spin on WMD, but one wonders how much of that was just bad intel fueled as relevant out of leftover fear from 9/11 and how much was really anyone being intentionally misled. I do not know if it was simply jumping the gun on intel when they needed more info. or lies and distortion
Based on my personal view, I do not see Dems as spineless, simply doing what they think is best based on the information that they have.
For example, for the last CR, Schumer had information that Trump wanted the shutdown to excuse more spending cuts and to help close more agencies, and this is still the same info today.
It is hard to have leverage using a shutdown when the other side actually wants one.
This time, in addition to pressure to simply "do something" from the left the minority leadership also had some demands for passing the CR this time, over healthcare, an issue that did not exist prior to the passage of Trump's simple majority Budget Reconciliation or BBB that was passed after the last CR (continuing resolution).
No Dems voted for BBB. (Some seem to confuse the BR used for BBB with the CR that Schumer let pass, they are not the same thing).
So, I see Dems as doing all that can be done. Others seem to fault them for things they do not do that in reality either are not possible or would do no good like the last CR they let pass. Had they shut down over a simple CR, it still would have not prevented Trump's BBB that was passed with a simple majority and was not subject to any filibuster rules.
The same could happen this time as well. Even if the Dems got what they wanted in this CR standoff, the GOP could undo it all in their next simple majority BR or even use a BR to fund the government and save the day from a shutdown (from what I gather trying to research if a CR would have to come first, I come up with, a no but others can tell me how I am wrong if they have other info.)
Regardless, this is probably the only way the Dems will get the public to realize that it was the GOP who caused their premiums to rise when they get their new bill later this year from the Healthcare Exchange and see a large increase that they may not be able to afford.
I agree with the natural gas pipeline; that was not my point. The spinelessness quote was from Byrd's fight to get Democrats to not cave in to Bush II on the second Iraq War. Natural gas produces less greenhouse gas per unit of energy than coal and is cheaper in the long run. Manchin is a pragmatist as well as a realist. A Cassandra, perhaps. He saw where the Party was headed.
And yes, Democrats are doing all that can be done, which is next to nothing. There are no leaders, if you ask the public. Democratic approval is rock bottom. Schumer deserves the odium he is held in by a majority of Democratic constituencies.
The shutdown is either going to be a debacle because Dems don't back off, or a nightmare windfall for Trumpism in hastening the declaration of emergency forthcoming.
Winter is coming, as it were. Blue Cities are being occupied by the military, which is being urged by Trump and SecDef to be aggressive to the point of violence. He's prepping for midterms. Same with the gerrymandering issue.
Trump can be absolutely certain that a Democratic House will impeach him as soon as practicable, so retaining control of the House at midterms is paramount. Assuming there are midterms, and that they are not corrupted, and his obvious debility of age does not incapacitate him.
Okay, I guess if I was more informed about Byrd and had read your comment more carefully I would have better gotten the point you were making.
Yes the Dems can do next to nothing without a majority in either House, but the public does not see this reality and tends to fault them anyway.
Manchin should have seen the writing on the wall and known he would not be re-elected. He could have done the right thing and been a great environmental hero instead of the villain that history will now show.
Apparently he did; he's not running for re-election. That's not to say he wouldn't be re-elected. WV is historically Democratic (Senators and Governor, if not President) and the people are primarily Democratic in spirit. It's the Party that's moved away from them, and, considering they have no functional role in the three branches any more, it's pretty plain that the Party has moved away from the nation as a whole. It is what it is.
Manchin is no longer in the Senate. He did not run for re-election in 2024. The coal miners union begged him to vote for Build Back Better, which would have opened up resources for miners with coal-related disease and would have provided job training assistance in other fields.
West Virginia elected a Republican as its replacement for Manchin.
Interestingly, the latest "coal mine" in Wyoming is not for coal - it's for rare earths for (gasp) permanent magnets for wind turbines & BEV electric motors (and other advanced electronics).
https://apnews.com/article/wyoming-coal-rare-earth-ramaco-mine-e4a3eff0b20039491df2dac99fa8ef0f
Meanwhile, looks like coal mining itself is not drawing businesses - https://www.wyomingnews.com/news/local_news/wyoming-s-massive-new-federal-coal-tract-not-likely-to-draw-high-bids/article_30da706f-b96e-4559-83fb-96c9852fd1a1.html "Even if it is sold, they doubt whether a coal company can line up enough buyers for the estimated 20 to 25 years it would take to mine the coal."
The discovery of Wyoming's Powder River Basin coalfield (which is both cheap and easy to mine, and low in sulfur meaning less noxious air pollution) was likely a big factor in stalling the advance of nuclear power in the US after 1970.
One of the Koch brothers’ best investments was the Manchin they bought in West Virginia.
True, it’s all about fossil fuels and fossilized stupidity in which the Republicans, led by the fossil fuel companies, think climate change is a hoax (it’s not,) ignore all scientific evidence of climate change, and think they can go on and carry on business as usual. The rise of sea levels, inundation of cities and towns built upon land adjacent to the oceans, gulf, or rivers, and the increased destruction by storms made more severe by climate change may cause them to rethink this, but I have my doubts about it.
I think many elected Republicans realize that climate change is real. But they have to contend with the implicit (or maybe explicit) threats as well as continuing to be elected.
A problem in the US is that fixed elections every 2 years means one is continually in campaign for the next (Trump influenced) primaries & (general) election.
Good point, and with our electoral system oiled with big bucks, representatives and senators have to spend their time dialing for dollars instead of actually legislating.
Idiocy yes. But not a random idiocy. There's a weird mixture of ideology and cynicism here. But this is certainly a way of stringing along a portion of the public with one more version of "we will give you back the good old days that those evil liberals stole from you."
Should add that I recently read a small book about Hannah Arendt who studied the rise of totalitarianism. She says that one of the key contributors to its rise is the ability to tell people a unified set of lies about the source of their problems. It doesn't matter that they're all lies because they all fit together to tap into the same anger.
The GOP Idiocy isn't random. It's a systematic program to destroy the US, reduce the US standard of living, and eliminate the US role in running the international trade system. What's going on now is beyond anything Russia or China could have thought up, they just don't have the imagination. Historians will be absolutely baffled trying to explain this in the future.
The Republican program is this: rich, white men are entitled by God to rule over the masses. When people know their place, order is established. Taxes are seen as confiscation of individually owned property, and thus are an assault on personal liberty.
Now since a political party advocating "know your place" is not going to be popular, other tactics were required. Namely split the masses against each other by exploiting differences of gender, race, region, religion and sexual orientation. Nixon was first, but he blew it, and the lesson learned then was never again and never give in. Reagan was the affable front man for nasty people like Buchanan, Cheney, Atwater and Rumsfeld. The Republicans had it all going for them with Bush I. Winning the Gulf War, etc., but in late 1991 and 1992 there was a recession. Clinton came out of nowhere to win the Presidency. A shocker. That meant that Gingrich had to take the gloves off, and the culture wars began in earnest, and the lies, lies, lies. Using a propaganda network called Fox "News". Trumpism started way back then with the impeachment, then Bush II was appointed, but he blew it, and, OMG, a black man was elected, and Trumpism got a massive booster shot. Donald just took advantage of what had already been started, and he's done it better than anyone before to split the masses, confuse them, distract them and all the while taking the money and power for himself and his billionaire buddies, ie, the new oligarchs. Now his job is to make sure people know their place so order is established in accordance with his and the oligarchs' wishes. Which is why he goes after universities, the media, Democrats, unions, government workers. These are institutions and people who are inclined to challenge the justice of an "orderly" society run from the top down. Such is not going to be allowed, and once the masses are beat down into sullen subservience by a combination of exhaustion and fear, elections won't matter, whether they are held or not.
Such is my history of the present moment.
I think this was the original plan. But then the Trumpenstein monster broke loose from his chains, and escaped from the lab. He is now running loose sowing chaos and destruction. This is more like a Greek tragedy were the gods destroy the GOP by giving them what they thought they wanted.
It is all about short term gain. “Grab mine before it is gone”!
And political power leans g toward money in the same way.
I have to wonder if there was an uprising when the first cars were invented, with people wanting to keep horse-and-buggy as transportation instead? Somehow I don't recall ever hearing about this much over-the-top denial of the need for progress. On the other hand, moving forward to cars wasn't the best idea we've ever had either!
Historical precedents points in a different direction. The arrival of cars spurred oil and gas industries to undermine trollies and buses. Little oil became Big oil by destroying what we now recognize as environmentally superior transportation options. Big oil is now just continuing its program of self defense at the cost of public health.
Cars became cheap enough especially after WW2 for the masses to afford them. Veterans bought houses in the former countryside on the GI Bill. Cars led to greater mobility and it was on demand so time and space were shrunk although physical distance increased. After growing up in the Depression in a crowded apartment, perhaps with the extended family, and then going to war, who wouldn't want the space of a house in the suburbs? It wasn't until the Sixties that the downside of "sprawl" became apparent. That was Lady Bird's big thing. There's no doubt that oil and gas and the automobile industry promoted cars over streetcars and trains. But it is not a hard sell to promote personal, on demand transportation.
If you examine the way big oil “promoted” cars over other transport options I think you’ll find that public preference for personal transport had little to do with it. Oil used its financial might to target and destroy alternatives to automobiles.
Good point, Roger, and I totally agree. I hate what they did to trains, too!!
Well, there certainly was in England. Google the "red flag act."
Apparently some US states temporarily had similar laws but quickly repealed them. My grandparents were born during the transition to internal combustion and would occasionally tell humorous stories about “the olds” of their youth who had trouble making the transition.
Perhaps this is folktale, but there are said to be instances where a farmer passed by a "horseless carriage" mired in the mud or with a flat tire and advised the hapless owner to "get a horse!" Change, especially technological change, is hard.
Those new fangled automobiles and electric streetcars allowed cities to be livable and healthy. Horses needed stables, needed fodder, and then they pooped. They were filthy. As transportation they were inefficient and labor intensive. Yep, the horse industry was put out of business but a new business arose in its place.
There was definitely a lot more resistance than you'd expect, though not from nostalgia over carriages as such. But in the early days of cars, people took pedestrian fatalies a lot more seriously.
There are stories from back in the day about sheriffs responding to vehicular homicides by rushing to the scene and having to protect the driver from angry mobs raring to lynch the "car murderer."
Thanks Teddy and all... guess my knowledge of history has a lot of holes! I sure wish we hadn't ended up normalizing 'car murders'! Maybe driving, walking and biking would be a bit safer now!
Maybe it was the fascination (mostly by men) of MACHINES that made noise.
In any case, there was evident advantages to cars that turned a 2 hour trip into 10 minutes. Especially if hauling goods was no longer hard physical exertion.
Note that brand name cars started in the 1500's in Italy, with the Rio.
What Ford changed in the US was assembly line mass production, patterned after the clothing industry.
It was the way we did the "cars" thing that was the bad idea. They've become a god, in that we witness our own human sacrifice to "cars": forty thousand lives a year, lost in the most frightful ways. It's a "god" by definition if inordinate human sacrifices are made to it.
It's a case of the morbidly rich controlling the interests of 340 millions people. Bring back the progressive tax brackets of the 1950s and 60s that created a booming middle class where democracy meant one man had one vote, not one dollar one vote, that it is today. It's time for the middle class to turn on the morbidly rich who have soaked them.
Citizens United was either the first or last nail in the lid of the coffin for US democracy. But either way, the lid is now thoroughly nailed closed.
Yes. Then the purveyors of "what aboutisms" jump on your comment to try to divert blame from Trump and the Republican Congressional Reps and Senators who are destroying more public lands and subsidizing pollution..
It is most certainly not idiocy; it is clever way to keep people voting against their own interests. It uses an emotional "grabber": jobs. It assigns the blame to hated "liberals" while hiding the responsibility of large corporations. It takes advantage of lazy mainstream media: whenever Trump said "coal" and "jobs" in the same sentence, the media could have summarized what PK just wrote. It does not take an a Nobel in eco to understand this!
Of course it's nonsense. Even backward SC, where I live, is removing coal burning power plants. The one a few miles from my home is not just closed. It's completely gone and its cooling ponds have been returned to the marshland they historically were. I am breathing more easily, literally. We have no brownouts and even power failures due to big storms are rare and usually power is on within an hour.
its more evil than that. Big Fossil makes Big Tobacco look like humanitarians...
I keep running “Idiocracy” through my mind. Do we want the US to be like Coal Country? I grew up with people from the “hollars” of Kentucky and W. Virginia. And, I remember too well the smog and dirty buildings.
I have read that his hatred of wind power is because of the windmills near his Scottish golf course that he says ruin the view. No more complex than that. Coal is probably money.
Don't we all wish that the Queens Man's limo, helicopter and 747 were coal-powered? That'd show alla them lefties!
Time for a little Black humor? Freedom fighting and frolic versus authoritarian oppression(I.e., the Demiurge) is forthcoming via Pynchon’s “Shadow Ticket.”
Ludditism!
“ China has no wind power” , DJT Another blatant lie or another example of complete ignorance. Either one should disqualify Mr Trump for the office of President of the United States.
During his February speech to both houses of Congress, Trump said that two companies were planning to build a two trillion dollar natural gas pipeline in Alaska. The Republicans got up on their feet and cheered. I did the math. A two trillion dollar pipeline would circle the Earth 4 times.
If what I saw is typical, nearly every small coastal town in Alaska has a windmill.
Is he lying or is just stupid?
He's both. One does not exclude the other.
True.
How about both!!
Wind turbines drive Trump, not whales, “a lil’ batty.” One stop on his retribution tour was Scotland, where wind units mar Trump’s view from his golf course. He refocused his rage on Rhode Island. There a court reversed Trump’s decision to halt construction on a huge, nearly completed wind farm. Solar and wind energies are cheaper than fossil fuels, but Trump dutifully dances with big oil and gas industry donors.
Love comments that come with some alliteration— “dutifully dances with donors”😃
How about this: Trump’s toxic tangle of tax tricks, tribalist tirades, and truthless theatrics threatens tolerance, tramples the tired, and turbocharges tyranny. You're welcome!
👍👍👍👍if he’s going to destroy us all, we might as well go down laughing!
Donald's delight: destroying democracy; commoners commiseratingly chose comforting chuckles, cackles, chortles.
Apologies in advance.
Spiro Agnew and his “nattering nabobs of negativity” were profound early influences.
Right, thanks to his speechwriter William Safire, a nasty piece of work himself
Charming Billy was later his newsroom nickname.
Nixon-era liberals were “an effete corps of impudent snobs.” Thus spake the corrupt king of “Nolo contendere.”
There will Never be enough money, power, or adoration to satisfy this twisted guy. He'll always crave more.
Great work as always, Dr. Krugman!
I've figured out Trump. He's the greatest contrarian of common sense, science and all social & cultural values. For every established fact, Trump has a contrarian viewpoint. Stop searching for objective reasoning and logic behind Trump's contrarian positions.
He's a spoilt, unlearned, unsophisticated, malevolently narcissistic man-child who is terrified of people discovering how empty and barren and clueless he really is.
And he has a small mushroom. Putin's puppet.
I agree. Too much effort is being spent on the diagnosis and not on the solution to the problem whatever that might be.
The solution for most such people is to avoid them, but Trump was made into a glamorous megafauna by a rich family and access to the New York media. Unfortunately too many people believed the hype and didn’t recognize him as the jerk they avoided in their hometown.
(Glamorous megafauna is a term used to distinguish trophy animals like elephants, large cats, and antlered ungulates from ordinary animals)
Trump also interprets the World, events and all other things as he wants them to be . . . not as they really are. By extension, MAGA does the same.
Welcome to paradise 🙂
We, as a species, need to evolve. We just passed into a new millennium! It is abundantly clear we need to leave horse power behind if there is any future. We also need to leave behind most of what the DjT regime stands for; racism, misogyny, hypocrisy, unbridled cruelty and economic inequality. It is time to break new ground in social order and plundering the Earth, especially fossil fuels, has no place in any sustainable future.
Nice sentiments and, well, hope springs eternal.
However, I'm not convinced we CAN evolve ourselves out of the burgeoning problems we have set ourselves. Our technological prowess and fascination with power will get the better of us, and will eventually prove to be our downfall. I genuinely look forward to a time when humans are "reduced" once more to living in tiny communities in huge forests, working with their hands, building simple shelters, and listening with joy to the bird-song while they forage for food.
Old fashioned coal miners had tough jobs, died young. Black lung was a terrible way to go. I get a certain nostalgia for a way of life long vanished. But the people who lived it got out as fast as they could.
Historically, coal mining communities were very close-knit and supportive of all in the community. The miners themselves were very proud of their jobs and their status in the community. Several ground-breaking (pun only half unintended) sociological studies were made of such communities in Britain and the US.
In Britain in the '70's, Thatcher's hatred of the miners' refusal to tip their hats to her and to defer to her anti-union policies led to thousands of police being sent in to quell the riots which ensued, and led eventually to the crushing of the miners' spirits and of their industries (this came at a time of a glut in world coal production, and collapsing coal prices). Miners would not have "got out fast" of their own accord - they were clubbed down and deprived of employment, and had to leave to find work elsewhere.
And we see that in the US, corporations and more efficient machinery and production methods led to the miners having to leave their communities to feed their families.
There was an earlier history in the U.S. of “Coal Wars” (google it) that lasted for from ~ 1890-1930. What Thatcher et al. did to British coal miners pales compared with the violence used against U.S. coal miners throughout Appalachia and in Colorado.
I hadn't heard of this at all - thanks for the heads-up. Not at all suprised by the actions of the mine owners and their agents, which is not to say that I'm not horrified by their tactics and oppression of the miners and their families.
Watch the John Sayles film "Matewan" for a good look at just one of the "coal war" battles.
Just found it on YT - I'll watch it this evening. Thanks for the tip...
I recently visited the Ludlow Massacre site near Trinidad, CO enroute to New Mexico. That was an informative trip, which revealed much brutal history and quite a few current curiosities, as well.
“coal mining communities were very close-knit and supportive of all in the community.”
I suspect the longing for these kinds of communities is behind our current problems. These communities might even be demographically integrated If people feel personally connected and that their lives are meaningful. Instead we are increasingly isolated and treated like horses during the transition to internal combustion engines.
I'd agree that a sense of community does seem to be missing in many people's lives these days.
I'm a retired boilermaker, Local 455. I went back to school once I was vested and became a Main Frame Programmer. TVA told us some 35 years ago they were getting out of the coal business and they gave their reasons. The number 1 reason was cost. It coat too much to mine the coal, ship it by rail or water to a plant that has to burn the coal in order to make steam to power a turbine. On top of all that you have to build and maintain the plant at billions and then when a boiler is started it has to run whether you need electricity or not so most of them ran 16 hours a day for no reason just in order to be able to have power the 8 hours a day it was needed. It takes anywhere from 8 to 24 hours just to start one of these monsters. Total efffiecentcy numbers suck, 25% to 35% at best. To date Colbert, Widows Creek, Paradise and Bull Run are gone. These were not just shuttered, they were wiped from the face of the Earth. Coal will never be back and Trump can mine all the coal he wants but he has not place to sell it. The idiot. Poor West Virgina kept believing that coal lie and voted away any chance that they might get new industry in their state to help support their families. The fact is, Technoology can't be stopped. History has proven this time and again and either you get onboard or you get left behind.
I just love the bit about how they have to operate 24/7 because it's so hard to restart. Just think it how expensive it must be to restart a solar operation every morning when the sun comes up!
Note to any MAGAts who might see this: This is called sarcasm and is sometimes thought to be funny. Just wanted to make sure you understood.
LOL, I watched the sun come up and I did notice the cost, $0.00 though I don't think MAGA would ever except that. They still can't get their heads around the fact that in Blood Red Texas almost 30% of their power comes from wind. Only an idiot would think that there is not a Republican involved in all that profit.
You can buy them books but you can't make them read.
I recently read somewhere (forgot where) that when people do not have a positive expectation of the future they will start to long for an (imaginary, idealised, facts-be-damned) past.
The rise of anti-woke seems to be (at least partly) an expression of that.
Facts won't help much fighting that trend. Giving people hope will. But their hope seems to have been mostly squashed by an economy where a small percentage of the people eis very rich and the future of the rest has been going nowhere. For instance, if education becomes unaffordable, how can you get hope from investing in your future? If housing has become unaffordable? If everyone's income except for the superrich stalls or even decreases in real terms?
Automation — both the physical kind (Industrial Revolution) and the mental kind (IT Revolution) and its combination (such as robots doing a lot of industrial tasks) — is now doing another boost of replacing human labour with machines. The humans that suffer long for a past where their work — their life — was meaningful.
Woke (addressing the facts about slavery, gender, etc.) is not so much the problem, nor are immigrants. But they have become a proxy in many human minds for change that had many negative consequences. Unless the inequality is addressed, the dreams about the past will remain powerful enough to fuel those that represent that anger in politics. But 'money' will defend itself against such change, as these too are humans who strongly believe their model is best for all. 'Human intelligence' is a phrase that should be used with extreme caution.
The comment about replacing human labor takes me back to a show I saw as a kid, in which Edward R Murrow (yes, that long ago!) spoke of the problems from "automation" replacing workers. It stuck with me for a long time.
Brian Merchant wrote an interesting read about the Luddites called "Blood in the Machine". He also has a substack on what this wave of automation is doing to jobs specifically. Worthwhile.
I used his insights on a piece on the jobs effect of Generative AI (ChatGPT and friends) last year. https://ea.rna.nl/2024/07/27/generative-ai-doesnt-copy-art-it-clones-the-artisans-cheaply/ . His writing has made the penny drop for me that while 'artificial *general* intelligence' may (quite definitely, really) not be on the cards, the same thing *may* happen as what happened more than 200 years ago: the introduction of the category 'cheap' (in both senses) in a large part of what used to be 'artisanal' human work.
I tend to see the Industrial Revolution as a series of interlocking revolutions. Pre-industrial was an energy revolution (e.g. windmills in The Netherlands, something described by Wallerstein in "The Modern World System III" as one of the early foundations for modern capitalism, 16th-17th century), the physical automation revolutions (cotton industry in the late 18th, early 19th century — generally what people have in mind as the start of the IR), an energy revolution (oil produced an energy glut), a science (chemistry mostly) revolution, a digital revolution. All typical S-curves, but sometimes boosting each other, e.g. the energy revolution enabled extremely energy-intensive chemical processes. Maybe the financial revolution has a place there too.
Generative AI may (but the jury is still out as the economic model isn't clear yet) do something like that. Or, as we can also see, it may largely cover us in 'AI-slop', see recent Harvard (I think) study on 'workslop' such as unreliable but cheaply AI-produced summaries that leave sorting the mess to the consumer of such 'workslop'. Both, I guess.
We the people will get together on October 18, and there will be more than 800 of us.
JOIN THE ROAR!!!
There will be a No Kings demonstration on October 18. Spread the word! 👑👑👑👑👑
To find a location, follow this link--
https://www.nokings.org/
Yes. Be there in force!
As the granddaughter of a coal miner who came to Butler, Pa. early in the 20th century to escape conscription by the czar's army during the Russo-Japanese War, and the daughter of a potential coal miner who enlisted in US Navy in 1939 to escape the mines, and who wound up escorting convoys across the North Atlantic before the USA's entrance into WWII, and who said it was preferable to working in the mines, I get it. I myself attended college in West (by God) Virginia and saw my fair share of mountains with the top blown off. I have become an environmentalist in large part because of that background. Having one's views "spoiled" by wind turbines is annoying and the concern not solely about whales and birds, but more significantly in my view bats, is a reality, I agree, but it is a price that is paid for clean, renewable energy. Perhaps science can find a way to better protect to those mammals (whales and bats) and birds if research could be allowed to continue.
According to the American Bird Conservancy, roughly 1 million birds are killed each year by windmills. The studies vary on this, but that's the suggested upper bound.
But... Guess how many are killed by collisions with large glass buildings. The estimates range up to 1000 times more. (Of course, windmills are tall structures, so there's some overlap of data.)
Maybe we should ban high rise buildings. Since Trump appears to be such a bird lover, he should get right on that and tear down the properties that have his name on them.
You do have a great point that further research should be done to minimize animal deaths from all avoidable causes. I doubt that will happen soon. That doesn't transfer even more wealth to those who absolutely do not need it, except to boost their already troubled egos.
One thing every one of us can do is to turn off lights at night.
Many birds are also killed by cats. Should we ban them, too?
They've done exactly that in several countries.
No, but they should be kept indoors for that reason.
My wife's maternal grandparents lived in the Pennsylvania coal country. They were very proud of the fact that they worked "at" the mine and not "in" it.
I do think you will find any dead whales. Actually windmills stimulate sea life around them as they are creating safe corners for sea life. Not sure about the birds, but that could be limited too. Birds are not stupid.
I do not think....
“What it’s really about is culture war. Trying to bring back coal is all about owning the libs. And if it damages the environment, well, from MAGA’s point of view that’s a plus.”
Actually Trump’s policies are starting to make sense. We had to incur tariffs because of all the countries screwing us; you know like the McDonald Islands inhabited by Penguins.
So by Trump’s logic, coal will revive our energy independence goals. And as long as windmills cause cancer, and Tylenol causes autism, I believe Trump finally has a winning economic and energy formula.
I just can’t wait for Trump to give us all free access to those miracle MedBed’s, then all will be right in the world, and the affordable healthcare issue will finally be solved….:)
Don't forget the 100k for H-1B ... that grand idea already has corporations looking to offshore more jobs to India.
High speed internet allows lots of tech jobs to be offshored. Trump has shot himself and the USA in the foot again.
And a lot of hard working people here in the US or others that would have at least paid taxes and contributed to GDP.
Maybe that’s what’s causing his cankles. ☺️
I’m sure that Trump would like to bring back the rotating antenna on our rooftops and the fax machine.
I love the smell of mimeograph in the morning!
I've been waiting for Trump to tell us that steam power and whale oil are the future.
Actually, a fax machine can't be hacked/viewed like email....but, I believe today faxes are even scanned over the wireless net, as landlines aren't being repaired. There's a flower shop in Oil City, PA that still has a landline. The conversation with its owner was a real joy, as I ordered flowers from her for a grave. She comments that Azerbaijanis come visit every year, as they're both places where the first oil wells were drilled around the US Civil War era. They (Azerbaijanis) have money & most of us are on welfare, she said. If she wanted to retire, she'd find no one willing to buy the building nor the business, with empty storefronts surrounding it, she said
Rotating?? Those antennas didn't rotate when I was a kid!
I argue (a lot!) with my hub over the impact of GWBush, and how bad he was in comparison to Trump. The differences between them are more about style than substance, IMHO, and the fact that ‘stage 2’ cancer arrives before ‘stage 4’. Mountain top mining, a euphemistic term for transforming Appalachian mountains into dead rubble, was totally reckless and employed far fewer people than traditional mining. Hard core Republicans love destroying the environment for fun, profit and culture war point scoring … what else is new??
At least you remember Shrub. I’m very concerned about the cognitive abilities of MAGAs who don’t remember W at all and keep blaming Obama for Katrina, the Great Recession/financial meltdown of 2007-09, and the Iraq War. I wish the media would interview some neurologists who might explain why some brains forget eight years. It isn’t entirely partisan too because many of us who voted for Clinton and Obama remember the downsides to their administrations. They haven’t gone AWOL from our memories.
Not neurologist but psychologists, and the Freudians studied this extensively.
* Mountain Top Removal
Ah, but cutting off mountaintops in Tennessee left a lot of excavated places where one could find fossils! I went on a couple of weekends while I was working at Oak Ridge in 1962, on parties organized by a couple of scientists there. (Not nuclear types, except when investigating the innards of cells(not the jail type of cell).)
Tennessee is a beautiful place , but I won’t be going back there anytime soon. Not spending one nickel in any red state, and so glad that I put a lot of money (for me) into my humble little house during the Biden era, because I see a lot of ‘staycations’ in the coming years. Love my new solar panels too.
The Blaenavon Ironworks closed in 1902. Coal is not the future. It is not the present. It is barely the past. It is the distant past, replaced by oil and then nuclear, which are now being replaced by solar and wind. It's not a fax machine. It is a horse and buggy.
The Tennessee Valley Authority alone has 24 coal-fired electricity generating units, located at four locations. It's not distant past there. They do have plans to transition the Kingston TN plant to natural gas in a few years, but I'd bet those plans got shredded after DonnyJon's announcement.
According to this it's 4. Not 24. The most recent coal plant was built in 1973. The operational life of a coal plant is between 40 and 50 years. So, the newest plant at the TVA (your example, not mine) is past its operational life. The other three are on average twenty years past their operational life. The TVA also has 11 times as many hydroelectric dams (44) as coal plants (4). So, the regular past, not the distant past. I stand corrected. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_power_stations_operated_by_the_Tennessee_Valley_Authority
According to this, it's 24. I think TVA knows how many generation units they have. https://www.tva.com/Energy/Our-Power-System/Coal
4 coal plants. 24 burning units. The two webpages do not conflict each other. There are no dates for individual burning units. Three of four plants are still 20 years past their operational life. Everything built since 1973 at the TVA (your example) is gas, nuclear, solar, hydroelectric, or wind. That is not the future. That is not the present. That is the past. Yes, they are still operating. Coal plants are still operating. Perhaps I was too flippant saying it was the distant past. But it is definitely the past. It is a fax machine in the age of email. Running coal plants (or really anything) beyond their operational life is not a recipe for the future. It is a recipe for a disaster.
I regularly write pro-clean energy actions people can send to their federal or state legislators at Your Dose of Climate Hope! https://climateactapp.substack.com/