Morality is not determined by the church you attend nor the faith you embrace. It is determined by the quality of your character and the positive impact you have on those you meet along your journey
In his first State of the Union address, Trump declared that “we have ended the war on American energy, and we have ended the war on beautiful, clean coal.”
According to the Sierra Club, though, more coal capacity closed in the first 45 days of 2018 than in Obama’s entire first term.
The organization, which has made it part of its mission to shutter coal plants, said it's on track to close the country’s 262 remaining plants over the next decade. So far, the Sierra Club says efforts to close coal plants have prevented over 7,000 premature deaths and stopped over 120,000 asthma attacks, largely in marginalized communities overburdened by pollution.
Blair Zimmerman, a former coal miner and current county commissioner in Greene County, Pennsylvania, where the 4 West Mine closed in January, said the Trump administration hasn’t made any measurable impacts in that rural area.
"There's not been any significant change in the industry since he's taken over,” he told CNN.
Obviously I think that anybody who voted for Donald Trump is a fucking moron.
But there is perhaps no group of idiots as ignorant as the coal mining folk who really believed that Trump had any interest in saving a dying industry.
Trump lies, that's what he does.
How is it that people had such difficulty understanding that?
While President Donald Trump continues to tout “clean” coal, coal baron Robert Murray says it’s just a fantasy.
“Carbon capture and sequestration does not work. It’s a pseudonym for ‘no coal,’” the CEO of Murray Energy, the country’s largest privately held coal-mining company, told E&E News.
Carbon capture and sequestration (CCS), also called carbon capture and storage, is the process of trapping carbon dioxide from a power plant (during or after burning a hydrocarbon like coal) and then storing it permanently, usually underground.
......
“It is neither practical nor economic, carbon capture and sequestration,” he said last week. “It is just cover for the politicians, both Republicans and Democrats that say, ‘Look what I did for coal,’ knowing all the time that it doesn’t help coal at all.”
And this is from a guy who is a member of the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity — which has spent tens of millions of dollars trying to persuade the public that clean coal is the solution to global warming.
If, as Murray says, CCS is “neither practical nor economic,” then coal clearly has no future.
Which, by the way, is exactly what Hillary Clinton said during the 2016 campaign that got her vilified by the Republicans.
And now we have this guy saying essentially the same thing.
If this guy's name sounds familiar to you it is because he is the same guy suing John Oliver for "character assassination."
So you guys might remember that on Tuesday I posted a story about John Oliver's brilliant take on Donald Trump's inability to actually bring back coal jobs.
Part of that show also featured references to "Coal King" Bob Murray, a close friend of Donald Trump's, who threatened to sue Oliver if he included him in the segment.
Of course Oliver did just that, and even mocked a story told about Murray that suggests he once had a conversation with a talking squirrel.
"Welcome, welcome, welcome to Last Week To-nut, I'm Mr. Nutterbutter. Just time for a quick recap of the week..." pic.twitter.com/Gsveb3PUfb
— Last Week Tonight (@LastWeekTonight) June 19, 2017
Well for some reason Mr. Murray did indeed take offense, and now he is actually suing John Oliver and HBO:
A Republican coal baron is suing John Oliver, HBO, Time Warner, and the writers for Oliver’s show over the most recent episode of Last Week Tonight.
The suit, filed on June 21 in the circuit court of Marshall County, West Virginia, holds that Oliver and his team “executed a meticulously planned attempt to assassinate the character of and reputation of Mr. Robert E. Murray and his companies” by airing an episode that ripped into him. Murray runs the country’s largest privately owned coal company, Murray Energy Corporation.
“They did this to a man who needs a lung transplant, a man who does not expect to live to see the end of this case,” reads the complaint, which also lists Murray’s companies as plaintiffs.
The lawsuit isn’t a surprise to Oliver. In fact, the British comic said on the episode of his show that aired on June 18 that he expected it, noting that Murray has sued several other media outlets in the past (including, in May, the New York Times). In the episode, Oliver criticized Murray’s business practices, saying he doesn’t do enough to protect his miners’ safety. Oliver also noted that his team contacted Murray’s company before the episode aired, and that the company sent a cease-and-desist letter––the first time that had ever happened to his show.
Parts of the complaint read like it had been written by President Donald Trump. One paragraph says Murray “has built a strong reputation as one of the as one of the staunchest defenders and most ardent champions of the United States coal industry and America itself.” The complaint also claims that “[d]efendants’ broadcasts have vigorously supported and advanced Mrs. Clinton’s agenda.”
God this is going to be good!
Personally I hope that the HBO lawyers put the giant squirrel on the stand to testify.
Speaking of lawyers HBO once hired 160 of them in preparation for the lawsuits they expected from Scientologists for broadcasting the documentary, "Going Clear."
Even the Scientologists were not crazy enough to go through with any lawsuits. But then again I don't think they talk to squirrels.
By the way if you have not seen the segment which inspired this hullabaloo you really owe it to yourself to do so. It is actually very good.
I anxiously await this upcoming episode, because you KNOW that much of it will focus on this lawsuit.
Setting aside the "fact that [coal] is environmentally catastrophic," Oliver argued that Trump is less concerned with helping coal miners than in bolstering the coal industry -- two groups whose interests do not always align. With assistance from a giant talking squirrel, naturally, he focused on "the divide that can exist between a coal company’s interests and those of its workers."
Oliver conceded that while coal jobs declined under President Obama, it was merely the continuation of a decades-long decline caused by a number of factors, including declining use and mechanization.
These jobs have been disappearing "at roughly the same rate as careers in the zeppelin industry and babies named Adolf."
Oliver has done some amazing segments on The Last Word, but I have to say that this was one of his very best.
Made even more so by the fact that he was threatened with a lawsuit by coal mining CEP Bob Murray telling him not to air it.
Once again Oliver delivers solid journalism interwoven with genuinely funny jokes a to tell a complicated story in an interesting and entertaining manner.
Virginia has long been coal country, but the solar power industry has been increasing its foothold in the Commonwealth over the last few years. And now, Michael Pope reports that a significant shift is taking place.
Virginia now has more jobs in the solar industry than the coal industry. Numbers from the Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy show a 40% drop in the number of people working in the coal industry over the last five years. Henry Childress with the Virginia Coal and Energy Alliance says coal produces more energy with fewer employees.
“Coal will produce more jobs I think in the long term. But we’ve had to cut back because everyone feels like it’s not worth it to use coal anymore. And I feel that there will be a time when we will have to turn back to coal to meet the demand.”
For now, though, the solar industry has more employees in Virginia than the coal industry. That’s a dramatic shift for a state that has a long history with coal.
Yeah I think that this Childress fellow is engaging in a little wishful thinking there.
These solar power jobs will only continue to increase while the coal jobs are eventually going to disappear forever as renewable energy becomes ever more affordable.
The fact is that the whole planet is going green, and even though Virginia may be dragging their coal blackened heels, they will inevitably have to face that reality.
Don't look to the Kentucky Coal Museum to bring coal back.
The museum is installing solar panels on its roof, part of a project aimed at lowering the energy costs of one of the city's largest electric customers. It's also a symbol of the state's efforts to move away from coal as its primary energy source as more coal-fired power plants are replaced by natural gas. The state legislature recently lifted its decades-old ban on nuclear power.
"It's a little ironic or coincidental that you are putting solar green energy on a coal museum," said Roger Noe, a former state representative who sponsored the legislation that created the coal museum. "Coal comes from nature, the sun rays come from nature so it all works out to be a positive thing."
Yeah good luck with bringing those coal jobs back Donald Trump.
If this is not an indication that the coal industry is all but dead I don't know what would be.
