Another GQP Genius Move From Wyoming: If You Don't Buy Our Coal, We'll SUE YOU!!!!!

[hatrack]

Wyoming is faced by a transition to renewable energy that’s gathering pace across America, but it has now come up with a novel and controversial plan to protect its mining industry – sue other states that refuse to take its coal. A new state law has created a $1.2m fund to be used by Wyoming’s governor to take legal action against other states that opt to power themselves with clean energy such as solar and wind, in order to meet targets to tackle the climate crisis, rather than burn Wyoming’s coal.

Wyoming is America’s largest coal-producing state, digging up nearly 40% of the coal produced nationally each year. The state is heavily dependent upon revenues from mining to run basic services and as it produces 14 times more energy than it consumes, selling coal to other states is a vital source of income.

The measure sends a message that Wyoming is “prepared to bring litigation to protect her interests”, said a spokesman for Mark Gordon, the Republican governor of the deeply conservative state, which strongly backed Donald Trump in the last two presidential elections.

EDIT

Legal experts have said the new strategy is on shaky ground. While the US constitution’s commerce clause prevents one state from banning goods and services based upon their state of origin, there is nothing to prevent them banning certain things, such as coal, as long as the measure is not targeted at one specific state.

EDIT

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/may/07/wyoming-coal-threat-mining-republican-governor

[Scrivener7]

1. Why are coal workers so uniquely shrill in their entitlement? Lots of industries become

obsolete, but coal workers - who number fewer than employees of Wendy's - have been able to make the media see their plight as something we all must protect the poor coal worker from.

The writing has been on the wall for 20 years about coal.

Retail, which employs mostly women, has lost at least ten times the number of jobs, and you don't see salesladies threatening to sue if you don't go and shop in Lord and Taylor.

What gives with this? Is it all that they are just entitled white man-children, and that the industry is used to being subsidized so none of them ever need to worry, or is there something else to this?

[hatrack]

2. A heady mix of testosterone and rose-colored nostalgic bullshit, I suspect . . .

[marble falls]

4. My grandfather died of blacklung, so he was never very shrill. I don't see what you see ...

... but if it's true one answer might be that miners have been so totally screwed by owners when times were good, they have genuine fears over starving when mines close as we all know coal mines should.

I don't think an autoworker who loses a job in an engine plant feels overly eco when Ford opens an electric motor plant anywhere else, either.

[Scrivener7]

5. And my great grandfather delivered for a beer company and was crippled when

his horse-drawn carriage overturned on him. But how physically damaged they were by their now-obsolete jobs is not the issue.

As I say, the writing has been on the wall for at least a generation about coal. Miners being screwed by owners when times were good does not explain why now they are demanding that we continue to support the industry that screwed them long after it's usefulness. And if they have genuine fears about starving, then why are they still in coal mining?

I imagine some would answer that last question with "there is nothing else in these mining towns. It's coal or nothing." But why?? Again, we've known for a generation that this is over. It has been a generation where these coal towns have been nothing but meth and poverty and despair.

As I say, ten times the number of retail jobs have disappeared in recent years. You don't see whole communities continuing to camp out around the deserted malls demanding that they be reopened and people be forced to shop in them.

My question really has little to do with "eco." It has to do with obsolescence and it's inevitability, and the stubborn refusal of coal workers to face that inevitability, and their entitlement in saying we all must join them in this refusal.

[marble falls]

6. The issue is eco - dirty coal is losing its market. Secondly, we might need to look at how ...

... hard rock miners think and how pit miners think.

[Scrivener7]

7. Not sure what this means.

What about how they think do you think we need to look at?

[Fullduplexxx]

3. The free market party is doing what?