If you’re still not sure the planet is warming and contributing to worsening wild fires, droughts, catastrophic storms, flooding, warming oceans, dying species, and more; or if you acknowledge climate change, but don’t believe we can or should do anything to try to slow or stop the warming, then it must be because you live in a bunker with 50 years of food stored up or are convinced the rapture is imminent and there’s no sense in messing with God’s will. I would pray for you to change, but I have to acknowledge that I don’t believe in the power of prayer to change other people, though it might help me have more empathy for your misguided beliefs.
Hoppy Kercheval writes many columns for the Charleston G-M, and I agree with some of them because he usually makes good arguments and utilizes facts and logic. For instance, on October 5 he wrote about the obesity problem in the US. WV has a 40% obesity rate and the highest incidence of diabetes of any state. His proposed solution focuses on individual choices and on SNAP (food stamps), suggesting that their use should exclude unhealthy, sugary drinks and foods. I can’t really disagree with that. But does he remember the vitriol aimed at Michelle Obama when she tried to get school cafeterias to serve healthier lunches? He weighed in on this issue on 11/26/2011 in the Daily Mail writing, “How did the American people wind up with faceless bureaucrats and elected officials in Washington setting school menus from Maine to Hawaii? Increasingly, what should be local decisions are being made by a supersized federal government that cannot even control its own spending.” I guess the faceless bureaucrats are okay as long as they make decisions you agree with.
This Sept 13, he wrote about economic development primarily in Green Energy in a piece entitled, “Is the Glass Half Full?” The essay quotes Mitch Carmichael, Cabinet Secretary for the WV Department of Economic Development, crowing about the pace of new industrial projects increasing dramatically in 2022. Hoppy opines, “These largely green energy projects, if they reach fruition, will be like rays of sunshine casting a promising light on communities.” “If” carries a heavy load in that sentence, as he does not mention that some of these projects seem designed to utilize as much fossil fuel as possible while proposing to capture the carbon—a dubious proposition.
He also doesn’t mention that as a Republican delegate in the statehouse and later WV Senate President, Carmichael and his Republican counterparts continually passed legislation to promote fossil fuels and prevent growth in alternative energy until it was demanded by companies that refused to come to WV without access to green energy. He allows Carmichael to claim credit for the new industry in WV, when he should credit Joe Biden, Joe Manchin, and Democrats as well for writing and passing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), containing incentives for green energy development, with no support from Republicans.
Hoppy contributed an egregious column on 9/27/2023 in this newspaper titled, “Fossil Fuels Must be Protected.” He focuses his ire on Michael Bloomberg’s “Beyond Carbon” initiative. He decries a billionaire contributing money to “bypass Congress, which determines energy policy for the country, and instead (let it) flow to local and state governments, as well as anti-fossil fuel organizations to…finish off the fossil fuel industry.”
Let’s parse that. Yes, he proposes to bypass Congress, which has barely responded to the crisis for 50 years until Democrats passed the IRA. Most all Republicans and a few Democrats from coal, oil and natural gas producing states have been stopping any action on climate change for decades, and you can’t act on climate without stopping the burning of fossil fuels and the release of greenhouse gasses, primarily carbon dioxide and methane, into the atmosphere with current technology.
And since when don’t economically conservative Republicans like Kercheval celebrate moving decision making to the state and local level and taking power from what they reflexively, and in this case accurately call a “swamp” in Washington, awash with lobbyist money from the fossil fuel industry? Organizations like the Sierra Club work tirelessly to protect the planet from further harm, to solve the myriad problems caused by burning fossil fuels and to promote green energy solutions. His claim they are “anti-fossil fuel” is disingenuous because even Hoppy acknowledges that the transition is already taking place, but then he makes the “War on Coal” argument that efforts to speed the transition are an attack on fossil fuel workers and coal communities.
It’s time to put that negative thinking behind us. Green energy creates and sustains far more jobs than fossil fuels and former coal communities will benefit from the green energy transition as communities are finally free of the devastating effects of poisoned water, polluted air, danger from sludge impoundments and more. WV needs to stop trying to hold back the transition to clean energy and start welcoming it.
Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston
published by Charleston Gazetter-Mail, Tuesday, October 10, 2023
