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President Obama Answers Congresswoman’s Question on WV Coal Jobs
Friday, January 29th, 2010
Today, President Obama took questions from the House Republican Caucus, including one from Congresswoman Shelly Moore Capito (WV-02) about coal jobs in West Virginia. The exchange begins around minute 19.
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Unofficial Transcript:
CONGRESSWOMAN CAPITO: Thank you, Mr. President, for joining us here today. As you said in the State of the Union address on Wednesday, jobs and the economy are number one. And I think everyone in this room, certainly I, agree with you on that.
I represent the state of West Virginia. We’re resource-rich. We have a lot of coal and a lot of natural gas. But our — my miners and the folks who are working and those who are unemployed are very concerned about some of your policies in these areas: cap and trade, an aggressive EPA, and the looming prospect of higher taxes. In our minds, these are job-killing policies. So I’m asking you if you would be willing to re-look at some of these policies, with a high unemployment and the unsure economy that we have now, to assure West Virginians that you’re listening.
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Look, I listen all the time, including to your governor, who’s somebody who I enjoyed working with a lot before the campaign and now that I’m President. And I know that West Virginia struggles with unemployment, and I know how important coal is to West Virginia and a lot of the natural resources there. That’s part of the reason why I’ve said that we need a comprehensive energy policy that sets us up for a long-term future.
For example, nobody has been a bigger promoter of clean coal technology than I am. Testament to that, I ended up being in a whole bunch of advertisements that you guys saw all the time about investing in ways for us to burn coal more cleanly.
I’ve said that I’m a promoter of nuclear energy, something that I think over the last three decades has been subject to a lot of partisan wrangling and ideological wrangling. I don’t think it makes sense. I think that that has to be part of our energy mix. I’ve said that I am supportive — and I said this two nights ago at the State of the Union — that I am in favor of increased production.
So if you look at the ideas that this caucus has, again with respect to energy, I’m for a lot of what you said you are for.
The one thing that I’ve also said, though, and here we have a serious disagreement and my hope is we can work through these disagreements — there’s going to be an effort on the Senate side to do so on a bipartisan basis — is that we have to plan for the future.
And the future is that clean energy — cleaner forms of energy are going to be increasingly important, because even if folks are still skeptical in some cases about climate change in our politics and in Congress, the world is not skeptical about it. If we’re going to be after some of these big markets, they’re going to be looking to see, is the United States the one that’s developing clean coal technology? Is the United States developing our natural gas resources in the most effective way? Is the United States the one that is going to lead in electric cars? Because if we’re not leading, those other countries are going to be leading.
So what I want to do is work with West Virginia to figure out how we can seize that future. But to do that, that means there’s going to have to be some transition. We can’t operate the coal industry in the United States as if we’re still in the 1920s or the 1930s or the 1950s. We’ve got to be thinking what does that industry look like in the next hundred years. And it’s going to be different. And that means there’s going to be some transition. And that’s where I think a well-thought-through policy of incentivizing the new while recognizing that there’s going to be a transition process — and we’re not just suddenly putting the old out of business right away — that has to be something that both Republicans and Democrats should be able to embrace.
February 13th, 2010 at 1:54 pm
What we really need to get across to everyone and to the President is that coal is not clean and any form of MTR is not acceptable. We must push for a cleaner form of energy such as wind,water, and solar power so that our Grandchildren does not have to inherit these same problems or much worse.
February 16th, 2010 at 2:30 pm
The latest technology used in mountaintop mining has taken jobs away from miners. They are not needed in the numbers that are required for traditional mining. The “natural resource curse”, which is usually applied to third world and developing countries, can be applied to West Virginia. Although West Virginia is indeed rich in natural resources, the wealth from harvesting those resources doesn’t get funneled back into helping the people of that state. The money goes to absentee land owners who hold title and rights to the majority of the land in the state. The wealth goes to profit for the coal industry companies. If Congresswoman Capito is sincere about her concern for the workers and people of her state she will start advocating for wind and solar power and the green economy they will build. These industries are efficient and sustainable, which coal is not. The profit would stay in W.V. There are also jobs that can be developed by agri-forestry that make use of the precious woodlands. Supporting the current practices of Mountaintop mining by lifting and ignoring current environmental protections will only continue to see the woodlands (and entire ecosytems) destroyed along with homes subjected to flooding and blasting. The coal mining industry owns West Virginia. It appears to me that it also
has the legislators in it’s pockets, also.
February 16th, 2010 at 6:48 pm
Are you crazy, Mr. President?