Chicago's Mayor Daley's environment commissioner last week on why his efforts to clean the air ignores the biggest polluters, two dirty old coal plants, responds with
the approach that gives any business that’s employing hundreds of people in the Chicago area time . . . is the preferable approach.
Illinois Governor Quinn this week signed a so-called renewable energy bill to
support construction of renewable energy and clean coal projects that will create jobs.
President Obama said this week of his support for ACES,
from my perspective, from an economic perspective, this is a job creator.
This diary looks at the jobs argument to support coal.
The Daley administration is most worried about possibly losing 200 jobs from the two plants located in the city resulting from putting tighter regulations on the polluters. For perspective, the June, 2009, Bureau of Labor Statistics for the Chicago metropolitan area shows 551,159 people currently counted as unemployed (11% unemployment rate). Two weeks ago, Daley layed off 400 city workers. Furthermore, this week environmental groupsare threatening to sue Chicago-based Midwest Generation, operators of 6 coal power plants in the region including the two in Chicago, for violating the Clean Air Act. A 2002 study by the Harvard School of Public Health estimates the particulate matter (soot) pollution alone from the Chicago plants (Fisk and Crawford) contributes to 40 premature deaths and 500 emergency room visits and almost 3,000 asthma attacks (pdf) each year, 80% of which is happening within 35 miles of the two plants. 200 jobs is a sick excuse for not further constraining the pollution.
The Quinn administration, taking over where indicted and impeached Governor Blagojevichleft off, thinks coal is clean and deserves billions of dollars in government subsidies. If Illinois doubles coal production, according to the latest Energy Information Administration (pdf) data, it would create about 5,000 new mining jobs. It hardly seems worth it. If every coal miner woke up tomorrow without a job, the U.S. unemployment rate would increase less than 0.2%.
Is mining a good job governments should be proud to support? A report by the Bureau of Labor Statistics published last year figures
The incidence rate for cases involving days away from work in coal mining was 294.8 per 10,000 full-time workers in 2006, while the rate for all private industry was 127.8. The median number of days away from work due to injury or illness is a measure of the severity of such cases. In coal mining, the median number of days away from work was 29 in 2006, compared with 7 days for all private industry.
As for power plant jobs Daley is protecting, between the radiation and toxic chemicals released in the air, not to mention the explosive equipment, it can not be good working in a power plant, either.
An AP article today, Coal rush brings jobs back to Ill., Ind., Ky. has a quote from someone excited about a new mine opening
"I guess we can call it the rebirth of coal," said David Jones, a former miner in his first term as judge-executive of Ohio County, Ky., where the unemployment rate hovers around 9 percent.
A report published yesterday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics highlights large metropolitan areas
Detroit-Warren-Livonia, Michigan, reported the highest unemployment rate in June, 17.1 percent. The large areas with the next highest rates were Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario, California, 13.7 percent; Charlotte-Gastonia-Concord, North Carolina-South Carolina, 12.4 percent; Las Vegas-Paradise, Nevada, 12.3 percent; and Providence-Fall River-Warwick, Rhode Island, 12.1 percent. Eighteen additional large areas posted rates of 10.0 percent or more.
Beside the questionable emphasis on coal jobs as preferred, there is a big question if the jobs are going to the areas where they are needed most.
Worse, as reported this week in the WSJ (subscription required)
U.S. estimates of a nearly boundless supply of coal . . . may be wildly overconfident.
So whether coal jobs are a good place to emphasize sustainable growth is dubious in more ways than one. It is difficult to swallow that the climate bill Obama supports gives the old plants like the two in Chicago a free pass from stemming the worst from climate change. Worse is how jobs is given as an excuse.