The ASTOUNDING huge big news out of COP28 "so far" is Biden's comitment to not just build NO MORE, not one, coal plant ever again, but the cycle down and Replace ALL COAL PLANTS NOW within 12 years.
US TO REPLACE COAL PLANTS
Coal is 20% of the US power system. That is construction of massive size. Terawats of renewable construction. Funding for remefiation for energy industry jobs, protecting former coal communities.
As air conditioning demand skyrocketed during the June #heatwave, so did available #solar and #wind energy. But the state's unreliable grid couldn't handle the full load available, wasting precious power.
Today in Labor History November 23, 1903: Army troops were sent to Cripple Creek, Colorado to put down a rebellion by striking coal miners. 600 union members were thrown into a military bullpen, and held for weeks without charges. When a lawyer arrived with a writ of habeas corpus, General Bell, who led the repression, responded "Habeas corpus, hell! We'll give 'em post mortems!” The strike was led by Big Bill Haywood and the Western Federation of Miners, which, at the time, was the most militant union in the country, calling for revolution and abolition of the wage system.
holy FCUK!! Australia just declared war on the entire planet
Queensland Coordinator General recommended Whitehaven's Winchester South #coal mine be APPROVED. This mine would be responsible for 583 million tons of #greenhouse gas pollution--more than ALL of Australia's #emissions in a single year!
How Bankruptcy Helps Coal Industry Avoid Environmental Liability
Jeff Hoops built Blackjewel into the nation’s sixth largest #coal company by acquiring #bankrupt mines. When it declared #bankruptcy, he pivoted to other ventures, leaving polluted streams and mud-shrouded roads in his wake.
In the Game of Musical Mines, Environmental Damage Takes a Back Seat — co-published with Mountain State Spotlight
West Virginia Governor’s Coal Empire Sued by the Federal Government — Again
The lawsuit, filed by the Justice Department, seeks millions in unpaid environmental fines as Gov. Jim Justice begins his campaign for the U.S. #Senate.
In case you are still under the illusion that we are trying to stop #ClimateChange, the #ClimateCrisis - we are not.
We are just working on channeling the profits "the right way".
" #FossilFuels being subsidised at rate of $13m a minute, says #IMF
"Last year, the gov imposed a 20% tax on solar panels, wind turbines and related technologies under the IMF programme, reversing the growth trend in solar markets..."
"..IMF loan conditions has forced the gov to abandon its flagship 600-megawatt solar project while resorting to easier.. coal power, in the 300MW Gwadar plant."
For those of you who (rightly) think that a key element in the world's response to climate change would be the retiring of coal-fired energy capacity & the halt to new building of plant will be concerned by the current record on both.
While we fret (rightly) about oil & gas, we shouldn't forget that coal continues to be a major problem.
Once again our political leaders are making pious pronouncements, but doing too little for a green transition!
It’s all part of a global playbook from the U.S.-based #AtlasNetwork to protect the profits of #FossilFuel and #mining companies, argues a Sydney researcher.
By Geoff Dembicki
Oct 10, 2023
"A campaign to deny #IndigenousPeoples a voice in Australia’s national Parliament is using tactics similar to an earlier conservative legal battle against #FirstNations communities in Canada, a new research paper argues.
"That’s no coincidence, according to the paper’s author Jeremy Walker, because think tanks linked to these efforts in Canada and Australia belong to a secretive U.S. organization called the Atlas Network that’s received support from #oil, #gas and #coal companies and operates in nearly 100 countries.
"'The coordinated opposition to Indigenous constitutional recognition by the Australian arm of the Atlas Network we can assume is motivated by the same intentions underlying the permanent Atlas campaign against climate policy [globally],' writes Walker, a senior lecturer in social and political sciences at the University of Technology Sydney in Australia.
'That is, to minimise the possibility of democratic government challenging the ever-expanding frontier of fossil fuel extraction,' he argues, a charge one conservative Australian advocacy group strongly denies.
"On #October14, Australians will vote 'yes' or 'no' in a referendum that would amend the country’s constitution to create a permanent First Nations advisory body in the country’s Parliament.
"'Most Australians understand that generations of Australian government policy have failed First Nations peoples,' UNSW Sydney professor Megan Davis, who is a Cobble Cobble woman of the Barunggam Nation, told the Guardian earlier this year. 'The voice referendum is an opportunity for all of us Australians to make the difference.'
"Earlier this spring national support for the 'yes' position was over 60 percent but by September it had collapsed to 40 percent or less, polling cited by Walker suggests.
Walker attributes that largely to the efforts of a #conservative advocacy group called #Advance, which has led an extensive media campaign urging people to vote 'No' in the referendum. 'The ‘Indigenous Voice to Parliament’ will wreck our Constitution, rewire our democracy, and divide Australians by race. It’s divisive, it’s dangerous, it’s expensive and it’s not fair,' reads a website created by Advance.
The campaign’s main spokespeople are Indigenous – Warren Mundine and Australian Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price – and they have been interviewed frequently in the country’s mainstream media. Yet few Australians are aware of Mundine and Price’s connections to the wider Atlas Network, Walker argues.
"Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price is another ‘No’ campaigner with Atlas ties.
Both 'No' campaigners are long-time contributors to the Centre for Independent Studies, Walker’s paper explains, a conservative think tank founded in 1976 with grants from resource extraction companies such as #Shell, #RioTinto and #WesternMiningCorporation.
The Center for Independent Studies is in turn a member of the Atlas Network, a Virginia-based organization whose members include hundreds of conservative think tanks and organizations across the world, many of whom are active spreaders of doubt about the severity of climate change.
One of the Center for Independent Studies’ first board members, Maurice Newman, was revealed as an early backer of the organization Advance in 2018, which is now leading efforts against the Indigenous referendum. And Advance’s lead 'No' campaigner Mundine is chairman of LibertyWorks, a conservative group also associated with the Atlas Network.
"Despite these connections, Advance strongly disputes any association with Atlas.
'We have never heard of the Atlas Network and absolutely reject the incorrect assertion we have any connection to them at all,' a spokesperson for Advance wrote in an email to DeSmog. 'The idea that our referendum campaign is being conducted or coordinated by ‘fossil-fuel corporations and their allies’ or the Atlas Network is wrong and frankly bizarre.'
"In addition to Australia and dozens of other countries, several Atlas Network members are based in Canada. And they too have led efforts attempting to undermine greater recognition of Indigenous legal rights. An Ottawa-based think tank and Atlas member called the MacDonald Laurier Institute spent years advocating against Canada’s federal government adopting the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, otherwise known as #UNDRIP.
"That’s because UNDRIP contained clauses that could potentially give Canada’s Indigenous peoples greater say over fossil fuel and natural resource projects on their territories. 'It is difficult to overstate the legal and economic disruptions that may have followed from such a step,' read documents produced by the Atlas Network and the Macdonald Laurier Institute that were obtained by DeSmog.
"The think tank has actively cultivated #ProIndustry Indigenous representatives as the face of its advocacy efforts on this and other natural resources issues in order to provide 'a shield against opponents that is hard to undermine,' according to the documents. First Nations critics refer to such strategies as '#redwashing.'
"'It’s a way of [industry] making their claims about their relationship with Indigenous peoples sound better than they actually are in reality,' Kris Statnyk, a #Gwichin First Nation lawyer based in British Columbia, told Drilled this summer.
"Walker sees a parallel between those tactics, and the current effort in Australia to prevent First Nations from having greater representation in that country’s Parliament. The 'No' campaign led by the group Advance prominently features Indigenous Australians arguing against the referendum, despite polling commissioned by advocates suggesting that 80 percent or more of First Nations people in the country support the initiative.
Like in Canada, some Australian fossil fuel and mining projects are located in or adjacent to the traditional territories of First Nations.
"Several Indigenous communities have led legal challenges against gas and coal expansion. 'Should an Indigenous Voice be constitutionalised in Parliament, First Nations representatives might raise objections to such fossil and mining projects,' Walker writes.
He argues that this is what’s at stake in the upcoming referendum vote.
"'The effort to deny Aboriginal Australians a voice is part of a global playbook from Atlas and its allies,' Walker told DeSmog. 'They’ve also used it in Canada and likely anywhere else that greater Indigenous rights could impact fossil fuel and mining profits.'"
Today in Labor History October 13, 1902: Teddy Roosevelt threatened to send in federal troops as strikebreakers to crush a coal strike. The strike by anthracite coal miners in eastern Pennsylvania was led by the United Mineworkers of America (UMWA). The region had had dozens of previous strikes led by earlier and now defunct unions like the WBA. The UMWA was created 12 years prior, when the Knights of Labor Assembly #35 merged with the National Progressive Miners Union. Over 100,000 miners participated in the strike, threatening to cut off heating fuel for most of the country. It was also the first strike settled by federal arbitration. The miners won a 9-hour work day (down from 10) and a 10% wage increase.
This was the same region where, in 1877, 20 Irish union activists were hanged on false charges of Molly Maguire terrorism to crush the WBA, brought on by the shenanigans of agent provocateur James McParland, working for the Pinkertons. That struggle is depicted in my novel, Anywhere But Schuylkill, which you can purchase here: https://www.thehistoricalfictioncompany.com/michael-dunn
Today in Labor History November 30, 1930: Mother Jones died, age 100, in Silver Spring, Maryland. She was an organizer or "walking delegate" for the United Mine Workers (UMW), famous for her bravado. When she and 3,000 women were released by a militia after being held all night in McAdoo, Pennsylvania, they marched straight to the hotel housing the soldiers and ate their breakfast. Even well into her 90s, she still roamed through the hills of West Virginia, encouraging miners to organize.
Today in Labor History September 21, 1913: Mother Jones led a march of miners' children through the streets of Charleston. Between 1912 and 1913, there were frequent violent conflicts during the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike in West Virginia. At least 50 people died from violence during the strike, plus unknown numbers from starvation. Most of the violence was provoked by the Baldwin-Felts detectives that the mine owner brought in to bust the strike. During one incident, the sheriff and private detectives attacked a miners’ camp with an armored train, equipped with machine guns and high-powered rifles. After the attack, Ma Blizzard led a group of women who destroyed the tracks, setting the precedent for Central American Solidarity activists who, in the 1990s, destroyed tracks after a munitions trains ran over and dismembered Brian Willson’s legs.
Today in Labor History September 2, 1921: The Battle of Blair Mountain ended on this date in 1921, with the U.S. government bombing striking coal miners by plane, the second time the U.S. government used planes to bomb its own citizens (the first was in the Tulsa riots, earlier that year). The Battle of Blair Mountain was one of the largest civil uprisings in U.S. history and the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War. The uprising lasted 5 days and involved 10,000-15,000 coal miners confronting an army of scabs and police. The battle came as mine owners tried to crush attempts by coal miners to unionize the southwestern West Virginia coalfields. From the late 1800s, mine owners forced workers to live in company towns, where rent was deducted from their wages and they were paid in scrip, which was accepted only at the overpriced company stores and was worthless everywhere else. The work was very dangerous and safety equipment and precautions were minimal. The mine owners had a long tradition of using private detectives and goons to spy on workers, infiltrate their meetings, rough them up, and block any attempts to unionize. The battle began after Sheriff Sid Hatfield (an ally of the miners and hero from the Battle of Matewan) was assassinated by Baldwin-Felts agents. Much of the region was still under martial law as a result of the Battle of Matewan. Miners began to leave the mountains armed and ready for battle. Mother Jones tried to dissuade them from marching into Logan and Mingo Counties, fearing a bloodbath. Many accused her of losing her nerve. The miners ignored her and a battle ensued between miners and cops, private detectives, scabs and eventually the U.S. military.
World’s coal power capacity rises despite climate warnings
A report by Global #Energy Monitor found that coal power capacity grew by 2% last year, driven by an increase in new #coal plants across #China and a slowdown of plant closures in #Europe and the #US.