Cary Neeper's Blog: Reviewing World-changing Nonfiction - Posts Tagged "jobs"

Coal Wars: the Future of Energy and the Fate of the Planet by Richard Martin, Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

With good story telling, Martin paints a picture of coal's history—its hearth-warming blessings of cheap energy, its future-bashing dangers, and its slow demise, leaving too many lives disrupted. Meanwhile, our future is seriously compromised by an overdose of coal's signature, carbon dioxide.

Martin shares his personal experiences while visiting the coal country in Appalachia, Wyoming, Colorado, Ohio, and four areas in China. The picture he paints helps us understand the importance coal has played in human energy-dependent history, how it has created mining cultures whose roots go deep in China, Europe and the United States, and now why its demise is raising difficult questions.

The author doesn't preach answers at us. He makes a strong case, however, for recognizing that "market forces are going to kill off coal..." (Other sources have reported that there are more jobs now in solar than in coal, which is being out-sold by cheap gas.)

Three principles, he says, could lead to a "set of solutions." 1) Coal burning must shut down before carbon dioxide does us in: "A sustainable energy strategy requires making choices." 2) "We can't abandon the workers." They need a "GI bill" to provide support while acquiring education and training for new jobs. It would cost only 1 dollar per ton of coal. 3) "the Solution must be global," and the "...only mechanism...a price on carbon... [i.e.] stiff penalties for greenhouse gas emissions."

It's a dilemma not easily faced, for coal gave us the energy to build our technological cultures, and there is still a lot of it available. Like our dependence of gasoline and cars, it's hard to imagine how we could get along without it. But, unlike transportation, the alternatives are not only obvious but urgent, if we are to rescue the future.

The Coal Wars: The Failure of Energy and the Fate of the Planet, by Richard M artin, New York, Palgrave Mackillan, 2015.
This is the story of the demise of the coal industry, the history of coal and its use, and its effects on three or more generations in the U.S. south, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming, Ohio and Colorado, some zones in China and in The Ruhr, Germany.

The author notes that “…nostalgia for a vanishing way of life is leading to a form of cannibalism…kids can’t be fed and educated on rage…not all chance entails betrayal…natural gas has become cheaper and easier to use, as has robotics, so jobs are lost in coal country. Economics is changing”

Coal has been used in China since the “Fourth Millennium B.C.” Now its industry is outdated and “inching toward absolute caps on both coal consumption and carbon emissions.” Taoism and Confusion values are both focused on protection of the natural world, so there is hope that China’s dependence on coal and the damage done to these values may end some day.

In the U. S., the battle may center in Ohio, and in Europe on the Ruhr. In any case, the author argues that coal may be shut down in the end, but we must not “abandon the workers. Any solution must be global.” The final solution: “…a price on carbon.”

Billionaires’ Ball: Gluttony and Hubris in an Age of Epic Inequality by Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks, Boston, Beacon Press, 2012.

In reviewing Billionaires' Ball I'm tempted to quote from the book Zoobiquity: by Barbara Matterson-Horowitz, MD and Kathryn Bowers. Chapter 5 is a fascinating tale of why we all--humans and animals alike--are subject to addiction. Evolution has provided us with nerves and brain chemicals that interplay to create emotions. Survival tactics are rewarded with hits of natural feel-good narcotics like dopamine. Accumulating wealth is a survival tactic, hence it can be addictive--a scary observation for these times.

The authors of Billionaires Ball remind us of the Crash of 2008 and provide a detailed history of “Chapter 5. Why Bill Gates Doesn't Deserve His Fortune, Chapter 6. Why Other Billionaries Are Even Less Deserving...and Chapter 10. Why Billionaires Are Bad for Democracy."

The authors compare the U.S. and Sweden. They observe that most Americans think that we are similar in the distributions of wealth. We are not. Our differences in wealth are currently much higher than the Swedes. In America the average wage has slid downward since the 1970’s, while exorbitant wealth has accumulated to a very low percentage of Americans.

The answers are simple. It is up to Congress to reinstate reasonable leveling measures. Trickle-down economics has been debunked as a myth. I come back again and again to the Lessons of History by Will and Ariel Durant: Rome, faced with hungry people and unequal wealth, chose a ”hundred years of class and civil war," while in the Athens of 594 B.C. Solon, an aristocratic businessman, “…eased the burden of all debtors…established a graduated income tax...reorganized the courts on a more popular basis, and...educated at the government’s expense..." sons of the military. “The government of the United State, in 1933-52 and 1960-65, followed Solon's peaceful methods and accomplished a moderate and pacifying redistribution…"

Why is this so hard to understand? People need to feel some basic respect as part of society, not as lackeys.

The Coal Wars: The Failure of Energy and the Fate of the Planet, by Richard martin, New York, Palgrave Mackillan, 2015.
This is the story of the demise of the coal industry, the history of coal and its use, and its effects on three or more generations in the U.S. south, Kentucky, West Virginia, Wyoming, Ohio and Colorado, some zones in China and in The Ruhr, Germany.

The author notes that “…nostalgia for a vanishing way of life is leading to a form of cannibalism…kids can’t be fed and educated on rage…not all chance entails betrayal…natural gas has become cheaper and easier to use, as has robotics, so jobs are lost in coal country. Economics is changing”

Coal has been used in China since the “Fourth Millennium B.C.” Now its industry is outdated and “inching toward absolute caps on both coal consumption and carbon emissions.” Taoism and Confusion values are both focused on protection of the natural world, so there is hope that China’s dependence on coal and the damage done to these values may end some day.

In the U. S., the battle may center in Ohio, and in Europe on the Ruhr. In any case, the author argues that coal may be shut down in the end, but we must not “abandon the workers. Any solution must be global.” The final solution: “…a price on carbon.”