Last Friday evening, a “horde” of tornadoes, as the New York Times called it, tore through Kentucky, Illinois, Tennessee and Missouri. Kentucky was hit the hardest — struck by five twisters, one of which left a trail of destruction more than 200 miles long. At the time of this writing, the death toll stands at 88, with 74 of those in Kentucky, including eight at a candle factory and two infants. Another six people died at an Amazon warehouse in Illinois.
Thousands of lives were ruined in the wake of this “natural” disaster. Tornadoes may be a natural phenomenon, but we’ll speculate man-made climate change has caused them to become more severe, and it’s climate change that cleared the way for this horde of twisters so far outside the normal tornado season.
Last month, world leaders met for the COP26 in Glasgow, Scotland. The purpose for the international summit was to revisit promises and goals made in the 2015 Paris Agreement and reevaluate. Ideally, we would keep Earth’s rising temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial temperatures. The Climate Action Tracker estimates we’ll increase the temp by 2.5-2.9 degrees C by 2100, based on the policies and actions currently in place. If the new pledges from Glasgow are met and maintained, we could keep the increase to 2.1-2.4 degrees Celsius instead, but we’ve blown past the 1.5 degree C benchmark.
According to Richard B. Rood, a professor in the Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering at the University of Michigan, humanity won’t be wiped out in 2100 if we can’t reach our global climate goals. However, he says, “The more slowly we reduce emissions, the more bleak 2100 becomes.” Still, he has faith in humanity’s ingenuity and ability to adapt.
Perhaps we all need a little more of Rood’s faith. Particularly Sen. Joe Manchin, who still insists West Virginia will never survive if it has to give up coal. (For the record, the West Virginia Office of Miners’ Health, Safety and Training says coal provides about 30,000 in the entire state, but fails to cite a year for that data. According to Stastista, coal jobs numbered less than 12,000 in 2020.)
President Biden enfolded many of his climate initiatives into the Build Back Better Act, including a pledge to phase down coal use. Sen. Joe Manchin had a measure to push coal plants toward cleaner energy scrapped and is — still — fighting against other climate change-combatting proposals as if his life depended on it.
Well, his livelihood anyway. As we’ve reported before, Manchin still receives significant dividends from his investments in the coal industry. Manchin repeatedly insists his interests are kept in a blind trust, but publicly disclosed documents show his investments in Enersystems — his family’s coal company that paid him $492,000 in dividends last year — separate from the blind trust, according to The Washington Post. The Dominion Post has previously reported on those same public disclosures and that same dollar amount.
In an interview this week with The Washington Post, Don Fox, a former general counsel and acting director of the Office of Government Ethics in the Obama administration, said, “The question I would ask him would be, when he says it’s in a blind trust, ‘Well, your public financial disclosure report that you sign and swear is true does not have Enersystems in the blind trust.’ And if the blind trust is truly blind, how do you know what’s in it?”
Manchin doesn’t seem to have much faith in West Virginians’ ingenuity and adaptability. He acts as if there’s nothing here but coal and coal miners, but West Virginians are determined and resilient. Biden’s plans to phase out coal include replacing one of the dirtiest fossil fuels with clean, green energy. And West Virginia could lead the renewable energy revolution — if politicians like Manchin would let us.
Maybe it’s not that Manchin doesn’t have faith. Maybe he’s just using the people of Mountain State as a smokescreen: He’ll swear he’s protecting West Virginians, when he’s really protecting his own assets.
