16 Dec 2009

Coal at the heart of Obama’s climate battle

Burning coal is the cheapest way America makes electricity but it is dirty. Sarah Smith visits the coal mining heartland of West Virginia and finds a way of life under threat.

Workers at the West Virginia Patriot mining operations at the Guston strip mine. (Getty)

In places like West Virginia, coal is the bedrock of the entire economy so people there are desperately worried about proposed new laws that aim to control pollution by introducing a cap and trade system, setting a limit on the country’s total carbon emissions.

Rocky Hackworth from Pritchard Mining told Channel 4 News he is “scared to death” about the future.

He said: “I’m 50 years old. I’m too young to retire. My men that work for me are concerned about it, they talk about it every single day.

“We all see the writing on the wall, if cap and trade is passed it will just desecrate the coal mining industry in West Virginia and nationwide.

“It will end up driving us into a bankrupt state.”

“God told man in the beginning, he put the coal in the ground. We don’t have coal mining in West Virginia, we don’t have nothing.” Leon Dolin

Coal states like West Virginia have huge political influence in Washington and there is enough coal left to last another 200 years. The miners believe it is their “God given” right to get it.

Retired miner Leon Dolin said: “God told man in the beginning, he put the coal in the ground. We don’t have coal mining in West Virginia, we don’t have nothing.

“I’ve been listening to global warming [coverage] on the television and it’s just a hoax.”

Carbon capture: saviour of coal?
Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels, but also the cheapest and most plentiful; there are 50,000 coal-fired power stations around the world pouring millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Hundreds more are being built as China and India develop their economies.

The first company to design and build a commercially viable CCS plant that can be retro-fitted to existing power stations stands to corner a huge global market.<

Scottish Power believes it can achieve this at two of Longannet's four furnaces by 2014. And the plant is, it says, ideally placed to pipe the CO2 out to be stored under the North Sea using much of the existing gas infrastructure.
But first they have to make it work.

Read more
A young campaigner displays an anti-coal sticker at a climate change rally outside the White House in Washington. (Getty)

Most of the coal states are represented by Democrats who want to tackle climate change but not at the expense of their voters.

One of the local senators in West Virginia is on the record as saying that he will not vote for anything that harms the workers’ jobs or families or coal-based economy.

And Republicans right across America are pretty united in their oppositon to cap and trade laws they think will cost business.

Congresswoman for West Virginia, Shelley Capito, told Channel 4 News: “If we force these, what could be onerous, emissions standards onto our manufacturing base, we’re going to be losing our jobs that are never going to come back – and that’s part of the heart and soul of America.

“I think we have to be very careful before we commit to something that’s going to basically chase jobs overseas.”

“If they don’t do something about it now our kids ain’t going to have an environment.” Jim “Greek” Platt

Jim “Greek” Platt, a former coal miner who now runs a burger restaurant, told Sarah Smith he worries about climate change but fears the US cannot afford to do anything about it.

He said: “Oceans are rising, placing disappearing – California, Florida, parts of New York…

“We landed on the moon first, we put rovers on Mars first, why can’t we fix this?

“If they don’t do something about it now our kids ain’t going to have an environment.”

The world needs coal to keep making cheap electricity and West Virginia needs coal to survive.

Climate change legislation could help to develop clean coal technology but it will have short term costs and American politicians dare not sacrifice their own people for the planet’s future.