Workers At Risk After Climate-Denialist Coal Baron Goes Bust
Don's not bright, but the kids are alright!
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I’m trying out an edition that highlights a few stories briefly, rather than going deep on a single topic. Let me know what you think: dave@dinfontay.com
TOPLINE
DON’S DIM IDEA: Trump admin is still trying to roll-back lightbulb regulations; make sure you register your comment!
THE KIDS ARE ALRIGHT: Youth activists pressured Miami Beach to declare a climate emergency. But the kids can’t carry the weight alone.
BUT FIRST…
Worker Pensions At Risk After Climate-Denialist Coal Baron Goes Bust
America’s biggest private coal company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy this week, making it the eight coal corporation to go down in flames this year alone. CEO Bob Murray has spent years denying climate science and fighting government regulation on coal, one of the very dirtiest forms of fossil fuel there is. He donated $300,000 to Donald Trump’s inauguration fund; later, he handed the administration a wish-list of rollbacks that the EPA has been treating like an agenda ever since.
Sorry to hear about the bankruptcy, Bob. (JK LMAOOOOOOOO) [via]
Now Murray, who looks like a cross between a Thomas Nast cartoon and a less-sprightly Monopoly Man, says he’s in a tough spot:
When you're a private company and you're in financial failure, the first person that loses everything is the owner. And that's what will happen.
Fingers crossed, Robberoni! But also, fingers less sarcastically crossed for the 7,000 employees of Murray Energy, whose jobs and pensions are now in jeopardy. There would be an elegance in Bob’s ethical bankruptcy being rewarded with financial ruin, but if his workers are guilty of anything, it’s… well, trusting Bob in the first place.
He convinced them that West Virginia’s failing coal industry wasn’t going anywhere, while also conceding that the Trump administration “can’t bring mining jobs back” because coal consumption has been tumbling for years. Even so, miners rejected retraining in solar energy jobs because they were so confident that coal was coming back. Not sure if those miners worked for Murray specifically, but generally speaking, that’s pretty fucked up!
Meanwhile, in the bankruptcy filing, Murray blamed the company’s failure on—and this is wild, but real—monsoons (caused by climate change) and trade wars (caused by Trump.) He played himself by stacking his chips behind a climate-science-denying president. But Murray played his workers, too, by basing his business strategy on demonstrably false premises (like, for example, that CO2 is not a pollutant.)
America has closed 298 coal plants since 2010. Maybe a billionaire baron like Murray goes bust here or there, which, like: good. But don’t forget the industry’s workers (and their families) who are plagued by disease and just scraping by because of rapacious wage-suppression. Their pensions are now in jeopardy, because even if they never worked for Murray Energy, there’s a good chance the company they did work for was acquired by Murray at some point. Now, workers like Tom Kacsmar are stressed, and pissed:
I was led to believe that if I did my job, I would have a pension and healthcare for the rest of my life… There is something wrong with the laws in this country that put the employees last in line to receive anything.
Fuckin’-A right there’s something wrong. Murray extracted fossil fuel from the earth, and profited from the bodies of America’s working poor. His greed drove him to bet against climate science and double-down on coal and Donald Trump. Now Murray’s empire is going up in smoke, but workers like Tom are going to pay the steepest price.
READ: The New Yorker’s dispatch on how Kentucky coal miners and anarchists are using collective action to fight for better conditions.
Don’s Dim Ideas On Lightbulb Regulation
In May, I wrote about how the Trump administration was hard at work trying to rollback regulations on obsolete incandescent lightbulbs that waste more energy and last less time than LED bulbs. Over 64,000 people registered comments opposing the rollback with the Department of Energy, but folks, they’re at it again.
In September, reports surfaced that the Trump administration would again try to:
significantly weaken federal rules that would have forced Americans to use much more energy-efficient light bulbs, a move that could contribute to greenhouse gas emissions that cause global warming.
The president has “joked” that he supports the rollback because he likes how he looks under incandescent light. ("Joked” is in air quotes there because this pretty obviously the depth at which he cares about this, or anything.)
But the rollback is a senseless setback for common-sense energy-efficiency measures, and particularly threatens to harm lower-income consumers who have less ready access to LED lightbulbs. They’ll be saddled with higher energy costs, and we’ll all be saddled with needless carbon emissions from wasteful energy usage.
COMMENT: Register your opposition to this stupid rollback today! The comment period ends on 11/4.
In Miami Beach, The Kids Are Alright
Most of Miami is only a few feet above sea levels. It’s widely considered one of the most vulnerable cities in the world to sea-level rise caused by global warming. Now, the city of Miami Beach has declared a climate emergency—and it’s because youth activists made the adults in the room face up to reality. Groups like CLEO and Extinction Rebellion led pressure campaign, which resulted in a resolution that:
calls on the city to urge Florida and the U.S. Government to immediately begin an “emergency mobilization effort to restore a safe climate.”
City officials plan to send it to Florida’s federal and state politicians, plus Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for whatever that’s worth. (Read: Not very much at all!) Miami Beach is one of 1,100+ jurisdictions that have made similar resolutions, including The Vatican. The Pope is no dope! (On this, at least.)
Kids are taking the lead on climate action around the country (and world), and it’s frankly fucking awesome. But society’s youth can’t fix this on their own, nor should they be expected to. Get fired up by The Teenz™️, then think about how you can put some skin in the game.
DONATE: Consider tossing a couple bucks to the CLEO Institute, which does climate advocacy and education in Miami.
READBACKS
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