Coal news and updates

From 1950 to 2011, the number of coal-mining jobs in the U.S. dropped between two-thirds and three quarters (to fewer than 90,000 jobs overall in 2012, by the Energy Information Administration’s count) with the hardest hits to traditional coal-producing states like West Virginia and Kentucky. In fact, today there are more solar workers in the U.S. than there are coal miners. For the sake of our planet and our overall economic stability, that’s ultimately a good thing: We should be figuring out how to transition from coal, which is our nation’s top source of carbon dioxide emissions, as well as smog, acid rain, and air pollution.

 

But saying we need to move beyond coal should not mask the fact that the coal jobs that remain are real jobs, in communities that depend in large part on the coal economy. Anyone who’s serious about moving away from coal also needs to be serious about investing in a coal-transition strategy, one that helps workers and their communities move toward a new and more sustainable energy economy.

 

There’s precedent for this: In 2004, when the federal government moved out of the business of supporting tobacco farming by ending long-standing federal quotas and price-support loans, Congress used public and private funds to create a Tobacco Transition Payment Program that directed regular “transition payments” to those farmers. The Transitional Adjustment Assistance portion of the Nafta trade agreement, created to assist workers who lost their jobs to competition with Canada and Mexico, is anotther example.

 

There are myriad reasons for the coal sector’s decline. But one thing is clear: It’s time to start work on a smart transition strategy for its workers.

 

 

Source: http://blogs.wsj.com/