Recent editorials from West Virginia newspapers:
___
Oct. 16
Charleston Gazette on climate change projections:
When today’s kindergartners are in their 20s, they may find a devastated world wracked by horrible hurricanes, droughts, floods, wildfires, tornadoes and other tragedies made worse by global warming. Coastal cities may be abandoned, sunken wrecks. Poverty and misery may result.
That’s the latest forecast from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a U.S. assembly of the world’s top scientists. Their new report is the ugliest yet. It predicts that humanity will suffer $54 trillion in damages by 2040 if the average global temperature rises a mere 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels.
By now, most scientists agree that Planet Earth has entered the Anthropocene Epoch, the era when the biosphere - the surface region where life is possible - is permanently altered by human actions. Logging, agriculture and urban construction are factors, but global warming from fossil fuels is the worst cause. Their fumes form a “greenhouse” layer in the sky, trapping heat on the surface below.
Burning of fossil fuels must be reduced drastically, replaced by renewable energy, the report insists. “There is no way to mitigate climate change without getting rid of coal,” says one of the authors, Drew Shindell of Duke University.
But most West Virginia politicians, along with national Republicans, shut their eyes to the looming danger. President Trump calls global warming a Chinese hoax and vowed to pull America out of the 2005 Paris agreement to reduce air pollution. Right-wing Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma sneered at climate change in a book titled “The Greatest Hoax.”
“The Greatest Hoax Strikes Florida” was the sarcastic caption of a New York Times column as Hurricane Michael ravaged the Gulf coast - only a month after Hurricane Florence did likewise. Those two natural tragedies inflicted more loss than the entire worth of West Virginia’s coal industry - but conservative politicians still won’t act to reduce the damage.
Penn State scientist Michael Mann said Hurricane Michael “should be a wake-up call - as should have Katrina, Irene, Sandy, Harvey, Irma, Florence. In each of these storms we can see the impact of climate change: Warmer seas mean more energy to intensify these storms, more wind damage, bigger storm surge and more coastal flooding.”
How long can science-denying politicos keep pretending that global warming isn’t hurting America? For a long time it may have been human nature to dally about the issue. Projections were in a future that seemed distant. Warnings came in the necessarily honest words of science - projections and probabilities, rather than certainties. But that excuse is evaporating, too.
Two decades? When today’s children are young adults. When today’s adults are hoping to retire. That is a very human time scale, and the warnings are getting more certain every day.
Online: https://www.wvgazettemail.com/
___
Oct. 16
The Intelligencer Wheeling News-Register on health care in rural areas:
A substantial amount of health care research seems to rely on an assumption that access to medical treatment is a given. For the tens of millions of Americans who live in or near urban areas with big hospitals, that may not be unreasonable.
But here in West Virginia, as well as in rural areas elsewhere in the United States, there is a difference in what type of health care is needed.
Good for officials at the West Virginia University Cancer Institute for making rural health care a priority.
Earlier this month, it was announced that WVU is one of six health care systems throughout the country involved in a new research collaboration. It is being funded by the National Cancer Institute and the Beau Biden Cancer Moonshot Initiative.
It is complicated, as you may imagine. In essence, the research involves electronic links between cancer patients and health care providers. The idea is to provide care more quickly and easily to cancer patients, so they do not have to make long, fatiguing trips to Morgantown if their symptoms change.
Good for WVU and others involved in the research. It amounts, in a way, to using technology to provide the equivalent of house calls.
For many Mountain State residents, that could prove to be a godsend.
Online: http://www.theintelligencer.net/
___
Oct. 16
The Register-Herald of Beckley on Gov. Jim Justice and the state’s economy:
While Gov. Jim Justice has been boasting about how well the state’s economy is doing under his leadership, John Deskins, director of the Bureau of Business and Economic Research at West Virginia University, was filling statistical buckets of ice water to cool the political hyperbole.
It did not help the governor’s happy narrative when Pinnacle Mine officials announced this past week that it was shutting down operations in Wyoming County and laying off hundreds of workers as a result. And then, strike the ominous chord on the organ, ABB Manufacturing said it would be closing its facility in Greenbrier County where 130 workers are employed.
In a Friday afternoon press release that had the calming effect of a cattle prod, Justice tried to reassure one and all. He said he was “directly involved” with efforts to keep the mine open, and was urging ABB officials to reconsider.
“It’s not over, it’s surely not over until it’s over and we’re not going to stop trying until there’s absolutely no other recourse,” said the governor.
Feeling confident, everyone? Anyone?
In a slog of a recovery from the 2007 Great Recession, state revenues this year - finally - have shown some resilience. The state ended the 2018 fiscal year on June 30 with a $36 million surplus, a trend that has followed in each of the three months since.
Something good was afoot, clearly, via coal exports to foreign countries. And, yes, we saw the uptick in tourism dollars. We are hopeful, but we also know what we see out the window. The rainbows that follow economic thunderstorms are difficult to spot in a mountainous landscape of persistent and grinding financial struggle, of downtown business districts folding to a Walmart, and Walmarts giving way to Dollar Generals. So, when we see the governor, Hawaiian leis strung around his neck, celebrating revenue totals by summoning the press and sitting in front of a banner saying, “Way to go West Virginia,” we cringe at the props, the staging, the hubris.
Our governor celebrates a number while, out here, some folks are concerned about the next meal or filling a prescription bottle of pain medication.
Here in the coalfields, we know the next hard turn is bound to come because our state’s economy is overly dependent on extraction industries. This is not our first rodeo.
…
Deskins knows that the recent turnaround has been driven by expanding coal production and renewed growth in natural gas production. He also knows that the state owns a 53 percent workforce participation rate - the lowest of any state in the nation.
He also knows that our population is aging, that too many young folks have moved out of state and that - here’s the killer - total public assistance to West Virginia in 2015 amounted to more than 27 percent of personal income.
Yes, social welfare is a significant economic driver in our state.
And, as his annual report states, Deskins knows this, too: The coal industry “remains subject to considerable downside risk due to lingering uncertainty related to coal use by domestic power plants and future global demand for thermal and met coal.”
…
Please, Gov. Justice. Stop the show, put down the props and get to work. As our state’s CEO, you need a long-term plan, not an afternoon program to remind us all just how fortunate we are that you came along.
Online: https://www.register-herald.com/
Please read our comment policy before commenting.