Coal is dying everywhere, including right here in the Commonwealth of Kentucky where coal jobs are lower than at any time since 1898! As Robert Reich recently pointed out, coal only employs 56,000 people nationwide in 2016 (down from 185, 000 in 1985). Even in West Virginia, as Paul Krugman reminded us, coal mining is only 3% of the state’s jobs—and WV is the heart of coal country in the USA. Apparently, irony is also dying since the Kentucky Coal Museum is now run on solar power to save money. In 2012, the National Coal Museum of Wales also switched to solar power. And Saudi Arabia (yes, SAUDI ARABIA!) now uses solar power to pump the Kingdom’s oil!
Trump can work his heart out to destroy Obama’s Clean Power Plan, but he can’t stop the Green Energy revolution. His god, the MARKET, has ruled against him. The costs of renewable energy sources, especially solar and wind, have fallen so sharply that, even without subsidies, they are the cheapest forms of energy anywhere. Even in the developing world, solar and wind are cheaper alternatives than coal and oil. Combined with the huge gains in global sales for Electric Vehicles (up 42% in 2016), Hyperloop, solar roadways, and other advances in renewable technologies, these developments mean that the Green Energy/Renewable Energy revolution is now unstoppable.
That doesn’t mean that Trump (and Pruitt’s) backwards actions are not harmful. They are. They will cause needless pollution, maybe deaths, and will slow progress in the transition from a carbon based economy to a Green Energy economy. And with the acceleration of Global Warming, all such delays are incredibly harmful. We have to resist here the way we have with healthcare. If we show up at town halls nationwide, we can put pressure on Trump and his Congressional GOPer enablers to abandon their love affair with oil and (especially) coal.
We can gain ground even in places like West Virginia and Kentucky by simply telling the truth: There is a War on Coal jobs—but it wasn’t waged by President Obama and it isn’t being waged by hippies or a Chinese hoax, etc. It is being waged by technology (mountaintop removal isn’t simply ugly—it requires much fewer people than old fashioned mines), by fracking (making natural gas far cheaper than coal), and by the advances in solar and wind tech that are making them far cheaper. Today, renewable energy sources employ more people than all the coal, natural gas, & oil companies in the U.S.A. Maybe, if we Progressives and Democrats tell the good fold in West Virginia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Illinois (for coal) and Louisiana, Alaska, Texas, & North Dakota (for oil), these things, they’ll stop pining for Trump to “defend” their defunct coal & oil jobs—and start demanding that some of the renewable energy jobs come to their towns!