Kercheval: Fossil fuels must be protected. Seriously?

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

Big Oil's Right Wing Conspiracy to Stop Renewals Must End Now!

 When it rains, it pours—especially in West Virginia in the 21st century, which is increasingly being defined by the effects of global warming. Climate change plays a role in most everything.

“The Power of Big Oil”, PBS Frontline’s 3 part documentary describes what amounts to a 50 year long conspiracy by fossil fuel companies and right wing think tanks and lobbyists to sow doubt on climate science. Exxon’s scientists were fully aware that disaster loomed and warned industry leaders that the burning of fossil fuels had been impacting the climate since the advent of the industrial revolution. The tipping point has been or will soon be reach, and we are living in a world virtually on fire with melting icecaps, rising sea level, ever more damaging hurricanes, tornadoes, derechos, and the severe thunderstorms that have flooded many WV communities. 

Greenhouse gases, CO2 and methane from producing and burning fossil fuels: coal, oil, and gas are the culprits. But climate change also has impacts on human populations and the movement of people around the world.

Increasingly, immigration from developing countries to western nations is being used to stoke fears that the cultures of their majority white populations are threatened. People don’t just seek to enter the US and Europe for “a better way of life,” they are escaping droughts, fires, environmental damage and wars, causing them to flee for their lives and health of their children. It is often a choice of dying at home or dying trying to cross the desert at our southern border or the Mediterranean Sea in flimsy overcrowded boats.

Scientists warn that pathogens and their carriers will find their way from the tropics to places that were previously temperate. Remember the Zika virus carried by a tropical mosquito whose habitat continues moving farther north?

Many people find themselves reluctant to bring children into a world facing these major challenges (another reason why folks will fight to preserve their right to decide when and how to have children). 

Big oil and coal want to keep the world addicted to fossil fuels. They use their wealth to fund politicians who stop legislation that tries to accelerate the transition to cleaner energy and they advertise the message that any effort to slow the use of the dirty energy that is despoiling our planet will hurt our pocketbooks. But it’s not your pocketbook they’re worried about, it’s theirs. 

Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a human and environmental catastrophe. I don’t know if scientists have ever quantified the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by the exploding missiles, bombs, and fires wars generate, but when you add the energy needed to rebuild whole cities, it has to be significant. 

This particular war may also have some positive effect, however, on efforts to reduce fossil fuel use. European countries have more than doubled efforts to replace Russian natural gas with renewables. America needs to be doing the same. New investments in fossil fuel infrastructure is a mistake. More oil and gas drilling and building new pipelines won’t add supply fast enough to help Ukraine or lower gas prices during this spike in inflation. Continuing to rely on dirty energy dooms our future; a livable future depends on clean energy. 

The real cost of fossil fuels is much higher than we pay at the pump. We pay with higher health care costs caused by pollution. We paying billions of tax dollars each year on “natural disasters” caused or made worse by a warming planet. Oil, coal, and gas producers should be paying those bills. America could lead the world to put a global price on carbon pollution. We could do it in away that protects poor and middle class Americans from the impacts of rising fossil fuel prices. Our West Virginia leadership should be advocating for these policies, not continuing to allow fossil fuel producers to pay few if any taxes and receive subsidies such as the WV Public Service Commission is allowing to keep coal burning power plants in operation.

Democrats (including Manchin) and several Republicans, passed President Biden’s infrastructure bill last year, which funds some of what’s needed to move our electric grid and transportation toward renewable energy. It’s time to pass the rest of the climate package that Senator Manchin stopped when came out against the Build Back Better package. We must work to leave our children and grandchildren a world in which when it rains, it doesn’t flood; when a forest fire starts, it doesn’t burn for months; where polar ice caps exist and our coasts are not inundated by storms and sea level rise; a world where people in developing nations can live a sustainable life and populations are not forced to become refugees of environmental disaster and war.

Climate Tipping Point?

Have we passed a tipping point on global warming? Or is there still time to slow the warming trend by reducing the burning of fossil fuels? Could predicted effects get worse faster than scientists have predicted? According to recent research released by world renowned climatologist James Hansen and his colleagues at Columbia University, sea levels could rise a staggering ten feet within fifty years instead of three feet envisioned previously.

A warming planet is no longer disputed, even by most Republican politicians. Climate scientists overwhelmingly agree the warming is caused by the extreme levels of carbon in the atmosphere and oceans largely from burning fossil fuels in which carbon has been stored since dinosaurs roamed.

Hansen could be wrong in his predictions, but what if he’s right? What will it cost to move cities to higher ground? What happens to populations forced to compete for food resources and agricultural land as farmland is lost to the sea and drought? Even if Hansen is wrong, what are the costs of rising seas, increased damage from powerful storms, heat waves, droughts, forest fires, and the other impacts of rising temperatures predicted by more conservative scientists over the coming decades? We have spent hundreds of billions in tax money and private dollars on such weather related disasters in recent years. 

Around the world and in some states and municipalities here, alternative energy sources are being developed and tapped to reduce the use of carbon-based fuels on a large scale. Solar panels get cheaper every day and are now competitive with the price of electricity produced by coal burning power plants. Wind power, geo thermal, bio-fuels, waste to energy, fuel cells, are entering boom times. The alternative energy market is producing jobs at up to ten times the rate of the national average. (http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2014/01/solar-jobs-growing-ten-times-faster-than-national-average-employment-growth.html)

Corporations must plan ahead. They want to transition to cleaner energy sources but need a level playing field. In fact, six of Europe’s biggest oil producers including Shell and BP recently called for a world wide pricing system on carbon. They’d rather compete in a predictable marketplace than face unpredictable regulations.

Why a price on carbon? It’s similar to taxes on tobacco products. We know that tobacco use leads to disastrous health consequences: lung cancer, heart disease, lost work time, etc. That costs all of us money, not just those who use it. So we have put high taxes on it, and because of that, smoking and the health costs of smoking for all of us has been reduced.

A revenue neutral carbon fee designed to garner bi-partisan support has been proposed by Citizens’ Climate Lobby (www.citizensclimatelobby.org) and endorsed by former Republican Secretary of the Treasury and State, George Schultz. It would collect fees and return them to American families. 

This proposed legislation sets a modest fee of $15 per ton on carbon rising by $10 each year so that the economy can adjust. Revenue is divided equally among American families (1 share for each adult, 1/2 share per child up to two children), providing the resources to cope with rising fuel prices and consumer goods. The respected firm, Regional Economic Models, Inc. (REMI)4 predicts a family of 4 would receive dividends greater than increased costs each year. By 2026 they’d be receiving $300/month. One million new jobs would be created in the first 4 years in addition to health benefits and a 50% reduction in carbon use over 20 years, far more than currently proposed regulations such as the EPA’s Clean Power Plan. The incentive to increase efficiency and develop alternative energy is obvious.

Our state’s representatives in Congress and most state legislators say that the continued mining and burning of coal is good for WV. They say coal is an inexpensive fuel and warn of job and tax revenue loss if use is limited in any way. But West Virginians are not only paying the costs of climate change, we pay for the negative effects of coal mining on communities: to health, water and air quality, and even threat of destruction from impoundments.  West Virginia could be a leader in alternative energy production and reap the benefits of a job boom in solar, wind, hydro, and other green energy initiatives with the help of forward looking policies.

Our representatives will not change their minds unless they hear from many of us relentlessly. Tell them this is critically important and that you demand action. Carbon pricing legislation does not rule out coal, but assesses the true costs of carbon it contains. Perhaps the industry will find cost efficient ways to reduce or sequester carbon emissions, but until they do, they should pay for the damage they are causing.