In a joint report by the Charleston Gazette-Mail and ProPublica, a backer of Donald Trump is funding a group that claims to be about creating jobs, but is actually trying to prevent certain jobs from coming into the state.
As reported, Ohio Valley Jobs Alliance claims to be a "voice for local jobs," but within month of its founding, "the group's first major action was aimed not at creating jobs, but at blocking them."
The reason the OVJA is trying to stop the construction of the Moundsville Power project, because of the group is funded by Charles E. Murray, founder and CEO of Murray Energy Corp.
According to ProPublica, not only is the group trying to block the Moundsville project, but the OVJA "is seeking to stop two other natural gas power plants proposed for West Virginia."
ProPublic notes the hypocrisy of Charles E. Murray (underlined emphasis mine):
In pursuing their cases, the lawyers paid, at least in part, by Murray Energy has relied on the same kinds of government regulations that Robert Murray has railed against. In the Moundsville plant case, those lawyers challenged a permit partly because it allowed an increase in carbon dioxide emissions that cause global warming. Murray has said global warming is a “hoax.”
Murray is right about natural gas, and he knows climate change is real. Profits matter most, humanity be damned.
The Union of Concerned Scientists states that natural gas is a fossil fuel whose "global warming emissions from its combustion are much lower than those from coal and oil." Though, "emissions from smokestacks and tailpipes, however, do not tell the full story."
The Union of Concerned Scientist explains:
The drilling and extraction of natural gas from wells and its transportation in pipelines results in the leakage of methane, primary component of natural gas that is 34 times stronger than CO2 at trapping heat over a 100-year period and 86 times stronger over 20 years.
Preliminary studies and field measurements show that these so-called “fugitive” methane emissions range from 1 to 9 percent of total life cycle emissions.
Whether natural gas has lower life cycle greenhouse gas emissions than coal and oil depends on the assumed leakage rate, the global warming potential of methane over different time frames, the energy conversion efficiency, and other factors.
Natural gas should not be a long term way of attacking climate change. It's really not combatting climate change at all.
Unfortunately, we have a president who cannot even support doing the bare minimum.
"We love clean, beautiful West Virginia coal," said Trump at his Charleston, West Virginia rally back in August. Supporters holding "Trump digs coal" signs. "And you know that it's indestructible stuff in times of war," added the president. "You can blow up those pipelines."
That's right, the president thinks a tomahawk missile couldn't fuck up a coal factory.
His stupidity is matched by the danger he and his acolytes pose, but it's not like the Democrats are doing much better.
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