Heather Smith writes at Grist about a new report on coal-to-solar jobs:
Your job as an explosives handling expert at the coal mine is almost certainly in peril, now that America’s clean air standards more accurately represent the danger that coal poses to the climate. What to do now?
A future as a Solar PV Technician would be the best fit for your skillset, says a chart-laden study published in the journal Energy Economics. Will you miss exploding things? Probably — we’re all human. But the extra cash might help soothe that loss — the median wage for an explosives expert in the coal industry is $55,973, versus the $62,270 that a PV technician makes. And while coal is crashing, solar is adding workers at 12 times the rate of the rest of the economy. [...]
What goes unsaid is the most obvious: Even if all 174,000 coal workers in the United States became solar technicians, it would take more than that to make the switch to a clean energy economy. We can take this as a reminder that access to affordable education — for everyone, no matter what part of the country they live in — is an environmental issue.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2010—Heat wave:
From the beginning of the environmental movement, the biggest pushback has always been presented in terms of the economy. That's been true whether it's cod fishermen taking too big a catch in the Grand Banks, monocrop farmers sucking fossil water out of the Ogallala aquifer faster than it can be replenished, oil companies trashing indigenous land in Ecuador or loggers whacking massive segments of rain forest in the Amazon or Indonesia. When environmental advocates speak up about these matters, the first cry is invariably: what about the jobs? Not that jobs are unimportant. But too rarely is a case made for environmentally sound jobs and practices that can replace the ones causing the demolition of a particular eco-system, large or small.
The truth is that the environment and the economy are not two separate entities. They are inextricably intertwined with each other.
We're currently witness to another example of how climate change will have that intertwined effect. In Russia. Of course, what's happening there right now may only be weather, not a climate trend. We won't know for certain for a while yet. But the omens aren't good. And it's not just Moscow smog, a few dead people, ruined crops and some burned barns and homes.
On today’s Kagro in the Morning show, we feature another Greg Dworkin v. Armando battle over media both-siderism. Trump won’t accept help on ISIS accusations. Are you really rich if you don’t pay your bills? Or are you just stealing? Trump the fabulist might not know there’s a difference.