Mr. Coal

This prompted by a recent article in the NYRB about the planet’s need for very fast electrification of everything that needs power. And for very fast switch to green power stations – which in the short term means wind and solar; in the medium term this includes nuclear (fission variety); and, in the longer term is likely to include nuclear (fusion variety). But wind and solar is what we can do quickly. For all of which see references 1 and 2. The second of which I have not seen – and may not see. Heap of unread books problem.

But I was prompted to think about the more or less hung Congress in the US, which seems to mean that one Joe Manchin, a 74 year old conservative Democrat senator from West Virginia, has a good deal more power than he ought to have. The price the electorate pays for sitting on the fence. 

It seems that West Virginia is a rather poor state, in the sense that there are a lot of poor people in it, people with their fair share of the problems that poverty is apt to bring with it.

A state which is very rich in coal, even though the industry no longer employs the numbers it once did. And I might say that Bing turned up far more unpleasant pictures of industrial degradation, further down the Monongahela River, in Pennsylvania, than it did in West Virginia.

A state which has become Republican, voting for Trump and against abortion. Lots of Christians. But the long serving Manchin remains popular.

Perhaps against this background and as the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, he is indeed the senator most likely to make difficulties about Democratic policies that Republicans dislike. From which comes his present influence. A pain, but that is how democracies sometimes work out.

A point of present interest, is his large personal stake in coal, which might well be thought to skew his political stance on energy and climate change towards being soft on coal, generally agreed to be the worst way of making energy as far as climate change is concerned. And his personal interests do seem to lie in the dirty end of the coal business. While his general position seems to be that coal is going to be here for a while and there is nothing to be gained by making its use difficult – or less profitable – and that the EPA, the Environment Protection Agency, is a bad thing which needs to be cut down to size.

One of his jobs is being chairman of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. Now while it might be fine to have a coal man in the chair at a time when one wants to promote coal, it doesn’t seem such a good idea at a time when one wants to phase coal out. From where I associate to the MPs in our own House of Commons who used to be sponsored by the mining union at reference 6. I dare say they would have taken much the same line as the coal owners when it came to phasing coal out, dangerous and unpleasant working conditions notwithstanding.

Democracy at work. And for all its faults, let us hope it does not lurch into populist, elected dictatorships, like large chunks of the rest of the world.

PS 1: it is odd that despite Bing turning up a lot of media talk about how he has been paid $4.5m over the past few years by coal companies in which he has an interest, and about how he might be worth $10m – not a large amount by the standards of corporate America – it is very bad on specifics. It is almost as if someone has been able to wipe the record – except for the substantial Wikipedia entry at reference 5. And a long article in a new-to-me online magazine called ‘The Intercept’, in particular a piece by one  Daniel Boguslaw on September 3 – for which see references 7 and 8.

PS 2: the caption to the snap above, turned up by Google, reads: ‘West Virginia community mourns after mine tragedy ... Tallmansville, West Virginia. Twelve of 13 miners perished following a mine explosion January 2, 2006. (Photo by Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)’. More to see if you click to enlarge.

References

Reference 1: The Future Is Electric: Because electricity is so much more efficient than combustion, totally electrifying our country would cut primary energy use about in half - Bill McKibben/NYRB - November 4, 2021.

Reference 2: Electrify: An Optimist’s Playbook for Our Clean Energy Future - Saul Griffith - 2021.

Reference 3: https://www.manchin.senate.gov/. 

Reference 4: https://www.energy.senate.gov/. 

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Manchin.  

Reference 6: http://num.org.uk/. The mining union here is the UK: ‘our ongoing belief is that coal can benefit the UK, it can be used in a safe clean manner and is best produced by miners in the UK’.

Reference 7: https://theintercept.com/. 

Reference 8: https://theintercept.com/2021/09/03/joe-manchin-coal-fossil-fuels-pollution/.