Originally published at http://www.commondreams.org/news/2021/04/19/climate-movement-applauds-coal-miners-demand-just-transition-green-jobs
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Maybe you WV voters should stop sending Manchin to the Senate, for starters.
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What do these coal miners want anyway?
We have already rebranded Dirty Coal into being Clean Coal.
Coal miners are no longer dying of Black Lung Disease. They are now only dying of Clean Lung Disease.
Good luck getting any help from most of the politicians that Appalachians tend to elect, which are Republican in the vast majority. No where in the country do you find more misinformed and uninformed folks voting against their best interests in election after election.
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The chance is close to zero that they would violate the Government procurement agreement.
Actually the chance is high that coal is on the rise. We’re exporting our natural gas we won’t be able to afford it if it doubles or triples in price here, because they want to get bigger money for it elsewhere.
Also, read this.
~http://www.world-psi.org/sites/default/files/documents/research/isp_tisa_250516.pdf
They wrote Catch 22’s into TTIP. and especially TISA.
Nomatter what we vote for they will do what they want to do. When the bozocrats… (the career bureaucrats) want to break their bullshit promises, they do. . When they want to. Our votes can be hijacked, JUST LIKE THEY ARE DOING WITH HEALTHCARE. Nobody wants the same insurance bullshit. Nobody loves their insurance company. The incumbency just doesnt want the responsibility at all. The moral hazard. Because its a crime.
As far as good green jobs. Teach yourselves how to do them, sing Linux and the thousands of free open source apps. Buy a Raspberry Pi. ( ~https://raspberrypi.org ) They crippled themselves in 1995 so now they have no WTO-legal way to help people. They made all the New Deal type programs WTO-illegal. India had a green jobs program for their unemployed in Uttar Pradesh. which we claimed discriminated against out corporations. we sued them in the WTO and won, making it WTO illegal to have those kinds of make work programs, ignoring the GPA (govt procurement agreement) Was it a scam, was it a setup? Its been obviously one since 1995 Their admitted goal is lowering wages throughout the world. This is what they admit to. Whatever countries firms bid the lowest are supposed to win. This way the government cant come to our workers rescue on jobs. Its forbidden. Instead they are encouraging the offshoring of the remaining good jobs. They trade them for higher drug prices. And longer drug patents. And especially fewer generic drugs. This policy kills millions of poor people. Thats what the drug companies demand. And our politicians suck up to them. Thanks to the WTO they get away with it. Other countries with lower wages can bid for the jobs and if they are the cheapest, get them. And we have to let them come in and replace entire departments. They hire the workers for the last nine months to train their replacements.Which makes the workers ineligible for retraining benefits under the WARN act. They have perfected the science of outsourcing and offshoring while not compensating workers for their early retirements. They clai to be doing us a favor by clearing away the “dead wood” businesses. This is the ideology of neoliberalism. Their global grab of everything of value. The politicians refuse to tell the truth. Don’t trust them. Make yourself a plan B.
###Learn baby learn.
###They are doing their best to throw us under the bus. Jump on top of it.** !
##Good luck!
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I have applied for ARPA-Energy funding. No promises, but at least one of the proposals needs a mountain to store energy.
Right now the gold standard for storing electricity is hydropumping. Hydropumping requires a mountain. Hydropumping requires a pond up on a mountaintop or at least a dam across a high mountain valley. When the sun shines or when the wind blows, excess electricity pumps thousands of tons of water up to the high pond. When the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing the water is let back down through hydroelectric turbines to generate electricity.
My innovation stores power in vast amounts of mine tailings or clean fill instead of water. The system costs much less to build than a mountaintop pond. I only need a warehouse on top of the mountain. I still need a mountain. This system won’t work in Kansas. Someone could always build high-voltage DC power lines out to Kansas from the mountains.
My hope is that we need to build a series of prototypes, moving from the kilowatt-hour range through the megawatt-hour range to eventually storing gigawatt-hours.
Yes, somebody has to build these gravity-based storage systems onsite. Expect much less danger but a few more flies. Good luck!
I have a second hill-based energy storage proposal also under ARPA-Energy review. Seasonal solar heat has been stored in the ground at the Drake Landing housing development in Alberta, so this idea isn’t completely new. My system stores solar heat and potential electric power. Building it out is going to be lots of work.
I try to pointedly ignore the fossil fuel industry’s ad agency when they are paid to write long and rambling messages, and/or great numbers of messages, on this comments forum.
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Getting us off coal while training coal miners for jobs in green energy is exactly what I’ve been advocating for quite some time. Since renewable energy is much more job intensive than coal, there will be lots of jobs still available for others. This would be a win/win solution.
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Although the usual alternative is even worse.
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Would the program yiou advocate for be open to all the firms in he world or just US ones, even if, say a maxican or Indian one bid cheaper in the tender.?
Rubber (workers)
Meet road (green).
I truly believe the fate of the world lies in the ballance
between exploiters
whose only powers are theft through deception
and
Labor aligned with Nature.
I may be wrong but I have a very strong impression that the Universe
sides with authenticity.
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Read between the lines,
“to develop so-called “carbon capture and storage” technology that traps carbon dioxide produced by burning fossil fuels and stores it underground” and note also who is supporting it, Joe “I’m for innovation, not elimination” Manchin.
Fossil Fuels to continue to receive huge government subsidies to keep on mining coal rather than those going to re-direct the miners to Green Jobs…as Roberts correctly warns …there will be no just transition.
Yes, although we would at least know we are dealing with a republican and not a fake dem republican. I’m not even sure of how a republican from WV would be worse than Manchin on issues that matter the most.
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I’m for all countries to get off coal & other fossil fuels, by converting to renewable energy & energy efficiency & conservation. US should attempt to lead in this rather than wait around for others to make the move first, but we must assist other countries in this endeavor. And energy is just 1 aspect of what needs to be addressed to have any chance of alleviating & surviving the climate chaos & environmental devastation confronting us.
Yeah, this Manchin guy is even more of a problem than I assumed he’d be, and I knew he could be trouble. But if he were Republican, then he would be an automatic “no”, meaning we couldn’t get anything done, unless Murkowski or Collins could somehow be reached. I doubt that they’d be any easier or someone would already be working on them instead of Manchin.
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Interesting! How are tailings or other solids moved up the mountain and then moved into a gravity system to generate electricity? Can that be done cost effectively? It would seem to me that moving the solids would be much more expensive than pumping water. Are you thinking of using tailings from current mining practices or would tailings need to be generated just for this purpose?
But we wont have other fossil fuels like the natural gas we had when growing up, we’ll be too poor to afford it. They are selling it off to others who will pay more for it. .
Building terminals to ship it overseas.
This is what corruption looks like.
In the winter there isnt enough solar and wind energy to provide a direct replacement in many areas. There isnt enough sun. Also, what if one of the Iceland volcanoes goes off. The whole country might freeze, as it did in the year without a summer. Benjamin Franklin warned us this might happen.
We are not the Saudi Arabia of natural gas like they say… That is all bullshit. The reserves of natural gas are wildly exaggerated. Its an investment scam. According to NY TImes.
SO, will it be coal or coal? The poor peoples fuel. This will also mean lots of buildings that no longer can handle coal will have to switch, to what, electricity? The cost of heating with electricity where I live is astronomical. That cost will drive the middle class out of the Midwest and large eastern cities. I know they want to redevelop but… not like this. Redevelopment used to be called “Negro removal” because the burden fell largely on the poor. Will Biden become famous for another redevelopment disaster like the ones in the 60s and 70s. It certainly would be consistent with his past record.
Selling off the natural gas will mean lots of buildings torn down. Entire neighborhoods. Basically millions of affordable rent stabilized homes. And they wont be rebuilt to be affordable. They wll be replaced with luxury apartments for the wealthy and very wealthy. When they build new, the middle class wont be able to afford the rents, They will be pushed out because older buildings that use natural gas heat will be declared to be “blight” and then will be condemned. Somebody tell me, is there any way out of this mess that you see? I don’t see one. This is what happens when politicians are corrupt, or working behind our backs to make their friends rich. Read up on the Keo v. City of New London decision. We’re being bamboozled out of millions of affordable rented homes currently in rent stabilized buldings in cities, by the loss of those apartments which tenants affordable rents are tied tp. When they are torn down their right to live in them vanishes. by fast talking sleazeballs in Washington. Looking to make a quick killing on their investment scam. Saskia Sassen is documenting these kinds of expulsions going on all around the world. To the newly powerless. Its a side effect of the concentration of wealth. Where are the people currently living in cities supposed to go?
Also when government procurement of services are involved we have to follow the procedure at ~https://e-gpa.wto.org Read up on the tendering process.
Whoever firm bids the lowest gets it, firms from all around the world can compete… This change is globalizing construction. No corporation left behind. Green jobs? I don’t see any, I thought the US won a WTO case a few years ago ending them.
Maybe youre thinking of some other country?
~https://nwlaborpress.org/2020/07/green-jobs-but-not-for-you/
~https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iV7msS6AYE8
There are rules that prohibit the kinds of laws the would be green workers are demandingto keep their tax dollars at home. Those kinds of laws are discriminatory because they are framed as “local content requirements” and prohibited in trade law.
If you were a foreign company and could get workers really cheap just by flying them here and getting a six year temporary labor visa, would you like it if the US demanded you hire local workers for a minimum of $8.00-$9.00 hour?
I’m not talking about getting off coal, I’m saying they will have to convert millions of large buildings back to coal . It will be the only fuel they can afford if we export the natural gas. The alternative is tearing them down and building new making millions of families homeless. This is so the owners of it can get what the natural gas is worth by exporting it to Asia where it fetches triple the price. Three times as much. This is what they mean by ending fuel subsidies. It will make millions of US families homeless.
Its happened before… When I moved to the West Coast city of San Francisco in the 70s much of the city was in the process of being torn down for a number of projects. The Western Addition and the Fillmore district were hit particularly hard. Wouldn’t you know it but that was where most of the Black and Asian (Japanese) homeowners lived. I urban explored many of the houses with the big X’s on their doors. It was a horrible thing to see those in many cases gorgeous buildings being torn down. Today they would be worth millions of dollars but their owners were only paid a pittance.
But Aren’t Biden’s staff- some of his close associates heavily invested in natural gas development (fracking?) Thats what I read on a credible site desmog blog
US/Biden – Palin: Finally, A Real Debate about Climate Change and Energy
By:Jeremy Jacquot on Oct. 6, 2008 @ 02:26
US/Obama, Biden Parroting Bogus Gas Industry Talking Points
By:Farron Cousins on May. 12, 2013 @ 12:57
US/Vice President Joe Biden Promotes U.S. as Fracking Missionary Force On Ukraine Trip
By:Steve Horn on Apr. 23, 2014 @ 12:18
US/Firm of Top Biden Advisor Anita Dunn Works for Fracked Gas Giant Dominion Energy
By:Itai Vardi on May. 14, 2019 @ 16:46
US/Former Inslee Staffers Urge Biden and House Dems to Embrace $1.2 Trillion Green Stimulus as Part of COVID-19 Recovery
By:Guest on May. 15, 2020 @ 18:37
US/Trump Pledges to ‘Save Your Fracking’ and Biden Says No Ban — But Most Pennsylvania Voters Oppose Fracking
By:Sharon Kelly on Oct. 26, 2020 @ 14:36
LOAD MORE from Desmog Blog
I’ve heard that, too, & Biden has resisted banning fracking. He is someone who wants to have it both ways. He values his close relationship to the corporate world.
Huh? you are delusional, they would never ban fracking. Its a huge investment scam, lots of the rich hope to make lots of money money off of it. Even though the estimates of how much natural gas exists are wildly overestimated. Acdcording to the New Your Times investigation of what they call the shale bubble…
But lets say there is tons of it and they push wages down enough to make it profitable to suck out… (wages have to fall a lot)
Especially, it would be sacriligious… extraction is their religion.
He can’ t reregulateonly deregulate. Trade deals are treaties, that regulate governments, so thats not allowed… Its a one way street. Even if he wanted to if he tried to re-regulate he would run into the trade deals we ourselves wrote. And WTO rules. The US taxpayer would be sued by these companies - maybge they planned to do this all along, and we would lose trillions to an ISDS suit.
We have to sell it once it starts. Even if people cant afford it. Its not their property.
Its like WTO rules demand that once you deregulate you cant re-regulate, so that means he must sell it (the natural gas or oil or whatever.) until its gone. Whatever deregulation Trump did it stays there. They knew this. But youseem to not have realized. Well, welcome to the 21st century.
This is what happens when we vite for neoliberals.
We will go from having among the most affordable energy in the world to average prices. Which means many people will be perpetually in debt for energy like in Europe.
until its gone to whomever pays the most. Sell it off to whomever pays the most. They pay three times as much in Asia. This has big implications to whomever cannot pay. Americans will freeze. They will freeze if they cant afford the new higher prices. Lots of buildings built more than 40 years or so ago will become much more expensive to heat. They can condem older buildings as blight now. Millions may have to move. Hope you have perfet credit and a three month deposit.
If you dont live in a fairly new building this may mean you lose your rented or owned home, no matter if your landlord doesn’t want to sell, they may condemn it as blight. To increase the tax base. “Blight makes right” Then they buy it up cut rate and gve it to developers to develop. They would rather that then pass up all that redevelopment moolah. Big new hideously ugly buildings improve the tax base. If they build it the rich will come. Towns know a economic crunch is coming and they ant the poor to move away and become somebody elses problem. Thats what Biden probably means when he says rebuild cities. You have to understand the coded language. Urban renewal really means ‘negro removal’. But really now its not racial. Poor is the new Black.
When he says ending energy subsidies he likely means ending rent stabilization, and tearing down older rent-affordable buildings, and building new. Do you live in a city like New York?
Do you remember the 70s? It was a battle as entire neighborhoods, invariably poor vibrant middle class neighborhoods were razed. This happened in San Francisco too- to the Western Addition, the Fillmore where great jazz clubs were located until then, Japantown. (which looked like Hiroshima after they got through with it) SF Public Library has the pictures, check them out.