If the U.S. acts now, God will give us time to fix climate change, said West Virginia Governor Jim Justice. I can't believe I just wrote that sentence. Justice gave a public briefing on Monday that was supposed to be an update for West Virginia. Justice started talking about the war in Ukraine and its implications for energy in the U.S. after spending about 10 minutes talking about the Pandemic. Coal miners, gas workers, oil workers, they get up every morning, they get their dinner buckets, and they go get dirty, he said. I'll let you read the transcript of where this goes next, because it's really a journey. Absolutely today in many ways, West Virginia, they could call on West Virginia, and West Virginia may be very well the catalyst to stop a lot of the carnage, to reinforce in many ways the fact that this country should be totally independent. I absolutely stand rock solid in favor of all the alternative energies. But I believe it is absolutely frivolous to think that today we can do in this country or this world without fossil fuels, and if we believe that we’re going to have just what the hand has dealt to us right now. We’re going to have chaos, we’re going to have real problems. … I believe, and my belief as strong is it may be, or can be, I believe with all in me, that we’ll have time and [God] will give us time as we go forward. If there is such a thing, and I underline if, if there is such a thing as climate change, I believe that he will give us time and the smart people will fix it. But today, today energy is being used as a weapon. This country, hands down, needs to be totally energy independent. It is a crying, pitiful shame to see what has happened under the Biden administration in trying to absolutely cripple us. We have become weak, have we not?”
Whew!
Justice is giving God some serious credit for their ability to un-fuck-up our shit, and coining the alarming phrase "on the verge of World War III." The idea that fossil fuels need to be promoted in order to save us from an energy crisis is something that the industry has been screaming from the rooftops. The U.S., as a global exporter of fossil fuels, has tied itself to the volatility of the global market, making the reality more complicated. Even though the Biden administration has put a lot of words behind its climate goals, it has also given a lot of free rein to oil and gas drillers.
Justice paints miners as victims of some outside mistreatment and talks about how dangerous their work is. Justice's family owns dozens of coal mines in five states and they have some serious issues. Two years before Justice was elected governor, NPR reported that his mines had $2 million in outstanding safety-related fines and had miner injury rates that were twice the national average. NPR reported that the fines had ballooned to $4.3 million, accounting for almost 10% of all outstanding debt from coal mines in the country.
A former federal mine safety official told NPR that Gov. Justice and his family have chosen to disregard, violate, and violate the rules of mine safety and the penalties of mine safety. The outstanding fines will be paid by Justice's family in 2020.
The state of Kentucky fined Justice and his son almost $3 million for not cleaning up coal mines in the eastern part of the state. God and the smart people need to get to work soon.
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