Bring Back Van Jones! Blindsiding Clean Energy With Dirty Coal

I miss Van Jones. A lot of us miss President Obama's former green jobs visionary.

That includes coal miners, and residents on Coal River Mountain.

If President Obama's brilliant green jobs administrator hadn't been
hounded out of office in a bizarre witch hunt last fall, we would be
engaged in an exciting discussion about pursuing a just transition to a clean energy economy at ground zero in our nation's energy policy and climate debate--the coalfields.

While clean energy jobs are a hot topic in the President's
vision--and State of the Union--Van Jones was one of a few
administrators in Washington, DC, who also envisioned a fair share of green jobs for the Big Coal-strangled coalfields in Appalachia, the Midwest and the West, not just the rest of the country.

Last week, the President spoke about the need for a transition in
West Virginia's coalfields--by calling for more coal and the new bridge
to nowhere in the guise of carbon capture and storage. He declared:

"For example, nobody's been a bigger promoter of clean coal
technology than I am. In testament to that, I ended up being in a whole
bunch of advertisements that you guys saw all the time about investing
in ways for us to burn coal more cleanly."

And then the President offered:

"What I want to do is with West Virginia to figure
out how we can seize that future. But to do that, that means there's
going to have to be some transition. We can't operate the coal industry
in the United States as if we're still in the 1920s or the 1930s or the
1950s. We've got to be thinking, what does that industry look like in
the next hundred years?"

Next hundred years? Even West Virginia Congressman and Big Coal
peddler Nick Rahall has openly discussed the issue of Appalachia facing
a "peak coal" crisis within 20 years.

In the President's American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009,
the entire state of Kentucky, for example, only received $4.7 million
in green job funds and initiatives--while billions of dollars continue
to be poured into the Big Coal black hole to cover external health care
and environmental costs, including defaulted black lung payments.

A study released by the National Academy of Scientists in October
found that the "hidden costs" of coal amount to more than $62 billion
in "external damages" to our health and lives. According to a West
Virginia University report this year, the coal industry "costs the
Appalachian region five times more in early deaths than it provides in
economic benefits." A recent Mountain Association of Community Economic
Development study concluded that coal is responsible for $528 million
in state revenues and $643 million in state expenditures in Kentucky
alone.

While Kentucky ranks 46-47th in per capita income, coal mining hubs
like Clay, Harlan and Martin County rank as some of the poorest
counties in the nation.

Thanks to mountaintop removal mining and greater mechanization,
employment in these coalfield areas has dropped by nearly 50 percent in
the last generation.

A year ago at the Powershift clean energy conference in Washington,
DC, Jones declared: "This movement also has to include the coal
miners." He added. "We could have clean coal, and we could have
unicorns pull our cars for us."

While our President continues to carry Jones' clean energy banner,
he still glibly clings to "clean coal" slogans, a motto introduced by
Chicago coal pusher Francis Peabody in the 1890s, and used over the
past century whenever the coal industry faces an image problem and
seeks to derail any diversification in our coalfield economies.

In 2008, Jones noted:

"I think it's important that we be respectful of all the contributions
that have been made by all workers. Even our coal workers are heros in
a way... in that they've been asked to sacrifice their lungs, their
health, their communities. We're now asking our coal miners to blow up
their grandmother's mountains! Awful... Mountain top removal and
strip-mining... Those coal miners don't set the energy policy in this
country but they have to make the sacrifices to carry it out. I think
that sometimes we aren't respectful enough, that we're not as
encouraging and honoring of the people who have gotten America to this
point."

Van Jones understood, like the majority of coalfield residents not
on the payroll of a coal company, that mountaintop removal mining--and
strip mining, in general--have blindsided any progress for sustainable
economic development and clean energy jobs in Appalachia, and other
coal mining regions.

Just ask residents fending off mountaintop removal in the Coal River Valley today.

As blasting continues daily at the Bee Tree Branch area of the
massive 6,600-acre mountaintop removal mine on historic Coal River
Mountain today, our nation's most exciting clean energy initiative and
green jobs breakthrough for the coalfields is being destroyed. Coal
River Mountain is being blown to bits, and with it, any sustainable
economic future for the area. Unlike the limited 14-year supply of coal
on the site, the Coal River Wind project would have provided long-term
energy for 70,000-150,000 households, an estimated 200 jobs and $1.7
million in annual county taxes.

Says Eric Mathis of the JOBS project in Mingo County, West Virginia:

"Sustainable economic development not only needs to start in the
coalfields but has to start in the coalfields if only for the fact that
America has a long standing commitment to operating within the
boundaries of democracy. Boundaries which seek to limit the
monopolization of markets and more importantly peoples choice. For this
reason America owes coalfield residents a choice to decide their own
fate. Sustainable economic development provides a viable choice that
shatters the 150 year legacy of a monopolized workforce. As our great
county transitions to a carbon neutral economy we owe coalfield
residents our greatest and sincere respect for building our country and
bringing us through two world wars. For this reason, the JOBS project
intends to show respect to these communities by providing a choice for
what type of development they want to see."

Van Jones would be standing at Coal River Mountain today, as part of
Clean Energy Week. He would have made sure that the coalfields--in
Appalachia, the heartland and the West--were included in the clean
energy future.