Facing Reality About Coal and Climate Change

Southwest Virginia remains the Commonwealths economic basket case - something that has been true for years but which has worsened as coal has become non-competitive economically when faced with natural gas and solar and wind derived power.  Donald Trump disingenuously promised to bring back coal despite the economic impossibility and all that resulted was undoing regulations to protect clean water and breathable air yet it was enough for many voters in Southwest Virginia to jump on board the Trump band wagon.  The Trump/GOP tax cuts primarily helped the very wealthy and coal miners got zilch. As a column in the New York Times lays out, the United Mine Workers of America - the largest union in the coal industry - appears to be finally grasping the reality that coal is never coming back and that the best to be hoped for is the investment in coal country that will help in the transition to different industries, something that is included in the Biden administration's infrastructure proposals. The big problem Southwest Virginia and other coal mining regions face is that most future facing industries have no desire to locate in these regions.  Why? Because these regions remain cultural backwaters where racism, the embrace of ignorance and right wing religious extremism predominate. The populations most in need of help remain the biggest obstacle to their own economic revival as noted in the column.  Here are column highlights:

“Change is coming, whether we seek it or not.” So declares a remarkable document titled “Preserving Coal Country,” released Monday by the United Mine Workers of America, in which the union — which at its peak represented half a million workers — accepts the reality that coal isn’t coming back. Instead, it argues, the goal should be “a true energy transition that will enhance opportunities for miners, their families and their communities.”

It’s good to see this kind of realism. Remember, back in 2016 Donald Trump promised that he would restore coal to its former greatness, reopening shuttered mines — and voters in coal country believed him. Many of them probably still imagine that something like that is possible.

The union, however, understands that it isn’t. What killed the mines wasn’t a “war on coal”; it was technological progress, first in the extraction of natural gas, then in solar and wind power. Generating electricity from coal would be economically unviable even if we didn’t have to worry about climate change.

Of course, we do need to worry about climate change, which is an existential threat to civilization. The question is how to address this threat.

The union’s document is in effect an endorsement, at least in principle, of the Biden administration’s plans to make action against climate change a centerpiece of its boost to infrastructure spending.

Some background: Conventional economics suggests that the best way to limit greenhouse gas emissions is either to impose a carbon tax or to create a cap-and-trade system in which polluters must buy permits for their emissions.

This is, however, not the path the Biden administration is taking. Why?

First, the economic case for relying almost exclusively on a carbon tax misses the crucial role of technological development. The reason large reductions in emissions look much easier to achieve now than they did a dozen years ago is that we’ve seen spectacular progress in renewable energy: a 70 percent fall since 2009 in the cost of wind power, an 89 percent fall in the cost of solar power.

And this technological progress didn’t just happen. It was at least partly a result of investments made by the Obama administration. These investments were ridiculed by conservatives . . . . In retrospect, however, it is clear that government spending provided a crucial technological lift. And this suggests that public investment, as well as or even instead of a carbon tax, can be a way forward in fighting climate change.

Second, the idea that a carbon tax can achieve bipartisan support is hopelessly naïve. Only 14 percent of Republicans even accept the notion that climate change is an important issue.

What might win over at least some of these voters, however, is the kind of program the United Mine Workers is calling for: targeted spending designed to help retrain former miners and support development in coal country communities.

I don’t want to be overly optimistic about the Biden strategy. For one thing, while there’s a compelling case against relying exclusively on a carbon tax to fight climate change, public investment alone also probably isn’t enough. Eventually we will almost surely have to put a price on greenhouse gas emissions, politically difficult though that will be.

On the other side, while it’s great to see the mine workers’ union call for policies that support “coal country,” not coal jobs — that is, communities rather than a specific industry — that’s still a tall order. Although Covid-19 created temporary disruptions, it remains true that the 21st-century economy “wants” to concentrate good jobs in major metropolitan areas with highly educated work forces. Promoting job creation in West Virginia or eastern Kentucky won’t be easy, and may be impossible.

But we can and should make a good-faith effort to help workers and regions that will lose as we try to avoid environmental catastrophe, and in general to make climate policy as politically palatable as possible, even at some cost in efficiency. Climate action is too important a task to insist that it be done perfectly.

Meanwhile, coal regions continue to lose population and many of the best and brightest leave for more progressive areas where businesses want to locate.  Southwest Virginia has much natural beauty, but unless visiting The Homestead resort or The Greenbrier resort just across the border in West Virginia, it's not a region I for one would want to even visit due to the unwelcoming mindset of much of the local population.