By Bryan Williams
How many years have we been hearing about “green jobs” that will employ blue-collar workers in obsolete smokestack industries, and how they will transform the American economy while curing the climate “emergency”?
Every election cycle, politicians say they will help foster more green jobs, which usually involves spending billions. This time, it’s $2 trillion if Democratic candidate Joe Biden gets to implement his plan. Four years ago, Hillary Clinton even went so far as to promise she would “destroy” the coal industry and then help the miners find training or new employment.
How did she expect this to play out in West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and other blue-collar job states, such as Michigan and Wisconsin? She practically handed that to Donald J. Trump, who shrewdly swooped in to rescue the coal miners.
There were about 90,000 coal miners in the US, according to The Guardian (U.K.), and about half that – about 45,000 – currently.
Why all the hubbub over so few workers? I think it comes down to this – coal miners are superdelegates for all blue-collar workers.
Since I started paying attention to politics in the early 2000s, I have heard politicians of all stripes make claims that we must transition our economy and provide training for workers in obsolete blue-collar jobs. Twenty years later, what have we got?
I’m sure there are success stories of coal miners who have transitioned to green jobs. But for nearly a generation, politicians have told these workers, “I have a plan for you. It will take away your job. There might be some money to retrain you and then you might get a new job after.” That rings pretty hollow and is disingenuous.
Along comes populist Trump in the 2016 presidential race, promising to save blue-collar jobs and revitalize American manufacturing. Since his inauguration he has done quite a few things that many other presidents and elected officials have not.
Has he been successful? Not in the case of the coal industry. The market has helped kill coal, but so have government policies. I have a cousin who used to work at a coal plant here in California. The company had invested millions in clean coal technology to burn the fuel with minimal pollutants. The plant’s officials tried for years to get Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and then Gov. Jerry Brown to take a tour and see how their stringent environmental policies weren’t necessary. Neither governor would even send a representative, and my cousin finally moved to Texas to find work. How many coal miner families can relocate? The political abandonment was felt – my cousin felt it deeply as well, I’m sure, by coal miners and their families in Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Trump may not have been successful in bringing back those obsolete jobs, but what’s more important, I think, to those coal miners is they finally feel like someone powerful has their back.
They will vote for him again.
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