BY JAMES BRUGGERS Inside Climate News
The global coronavirus that’s put tens of millions of Americans out of work and plunged the nation into a recession is speeding an ongoing transition away from coal.
With devastation in communities left behind, 80 local, regional and national organizations on Monday rolled out a National Economic Transition Platform to support struggling coal mining cities and towns, some facing severe poverty, in Appalachia, the Illinois Basin, Montana, Wyoming, Arizona and elsewhere.
Although it comes just four months before the presidential election in November, the platform doesn’t mention the Green New Deal, the proposed massive shift in federal spending to create jobs and hasten a transition to clean energy that’s divided Republicans and Democrats.
But Heidi Binko, executive director of the Just Transition Fund, which drafted by the plan with a wide range of partners, including labor unions, community organizations, business groups and environmental and tribal nonprofits, said it could be used as a template for part of the Green New Deal or any other legislative initiatives aimed at helping coal communities.
While some of the sponsors haven’t endorsed the Democrats’ manifesto for a new economy based on clean energy, all of them are united in the principles of community-based economic development for coal country, Binko said.
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The Green New Deal, introduced in Congress last year by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Sen. Edward Markey of Massachusetts, calls for net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 “through a fair and just transition for all communities and workers.” It does not include specific provisions for retraining out-of-work coal miners or reinvesting in struggling coal communities.
Last year, the Appalachian Regional Commission identified 80 counties across its area as economically distressed—meaning they rank among the most impoverished 10 percent of counties in the nation.
During a telephone news conference Monday introducing the sweeping program for economic revitalization of the nation’s coal regions, speakers from Appalachia to the Navajo Nation described the need for bottom-up economic development that builds on community members’ strengths and resources.
The main point in putting forth the platform is that communities that have relied on coal need far more help than they’ve been getting, said Just Transition’s Binko. The fund was created in 2015 by several philanthropic foundations and the Appalachian Funders Network to help communities redefine their local economies.
Binko said the platform is based on what has already been shown to work and lacks only the funding needed to scale up efforts well beyond President Obama’s proposed Power Plus plan, a $1 billion economic development fund tied to cleaning up abandoned mines. Congress funded a more limited program.
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