When politicians get called out by a flesh-and-blood voter for something damaging they said, something that was broadcast on CNN and archived on Youtube, their sudden backtracking, denials and squirming are revealing.
Clinton told a CNN panel in March: “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.” The former secretary of state, running for the Democrat nomination for president, was talking about renewable energy, and bringing clean energy to West Virginia, a state whose economy is dependent on fossil fuels and has been ravaged by President Obama’s self-described ‘war on coal’.
At a rally for Clinton this week, laid-off coal miner Bo Copley said to Clinton: “I just want to know how you can say you’re going to put a lot of coal miners out of … jobs, and then come in here and tell us how you’re going to be our friend, because those people out there don’t see you as a friend.”
Clinton said her CNN remarks were a “misstatement,” and that she’s actually been a friend of coal country “for a very long time.”
In an interview with West Virginia Secretary of Commerce Keith Burdette, Oil & Gas 360® learned the bitter facts of how the coal mining downturn is affecting his state:
“I think the Administration does need to consider that their changes in policy are creating a huge economic challenge in the coal fields, especially in Appalachia. It doesn’t matter if you’re from eastern Kentucky, Virginia or from southern West Virginia. These are all very topographically challenged areas that have provided coal to this country since before the Industrial Revolution, and has quite literally provided the fuel for this country’s growth.
“Those southern coal fields have largely produced a one-item economy… What exactly do you do with 100,000 people? These people have been in the coal business for multiple generations and have earned a great deal of money. Now we’re trying to convince coal miners to retrain for other careers, because we’re not going to need as many of those workers in the future, regardless of what happens with the EPA plan.”
The voters of West Virginia go to the polls next week to pick a nominee in their primary. Might Mrs. Clinton ask, “at this point what difference does it make?”
Clinton’s energy policies were discussed in a story on Oil & Gas 360®, included below:
Clinton Favors Clean Energy Grants and Tax Incentives, Deep Decarbonization
Former U.S. Senator from New York, former Secretary of State and former First Lady Hillary Clinton issued her position on energy on her website earlier this summer.
2016 presidential candidate and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
As reported by CNN and statements on Clinton’s Climate Change Fact Sheet, Mrs. Clinton’s energy priorities include:
- To have more than a half billion solar panels installed across the country by the end of her first term
- To expand the amount of installed solar capacity to 140 gigawatts by the end of 2020, a 700% increase from current levels
- To add more power generation capacity to the grid than during any decade in American history, from a combination of wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, and other forms of renewable electricity
- To incentivize investment in renewables by increasing the number of government grants for clean energy, extending federal clean energy tax incentives and expanding renewable energy on public lands
- To move our economy along a path towards deep decarbonization by 2050
- To fight efforts to roll back the Clean Power Plan
CNN reports that Clinton does not rule out using federal land for fossil fuel development, but says that she would ensure “taxpayers get a fair deal for development on public lands, and that areas that are too sensitive for energy production are taken off the table.”
When asked a “yes or no” question about banning the extraction of fossil fuels from public lands, Clinton told protestors in July that she would not ban the practice until alternatives were in place.
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