… and video about the Powder River Basin and Gillette WY. Includes some good RR footage, and shots of LONG lines of idle engines. And the video puts a human face on the situation.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/23/opinions/biden-climate-change-gillette-wyoming-coal-sutter/index.html
The CNN video doesn’t list any retraining or resume education programs from the State of Wyoming, Campbell County, the City of Gillette, Gillette College, nor the HR departments of the larger employers. The City and County should be developing plans to keep people employed in non-Coal positions and to find training & education for those that may find work away.
The Pacific Northwest, in the 1970s, struggled through a similar situation as the timber industry shrank and people flooded the job market as timber cutting and mill, not to mention railroad, jobs left. The range of jobs affected by the timber/lumber closures was calamitous.
From: Restructuring the Timber Economy
The effects of the shutdowns rippled through coastal communities, bringing hard times to retailers and other businesses, slashing local tax revenues, and starving community service organizations. By the time the national economy recovered in the mid 1980s, forty-eight thousand jobs in the Pacific Northwest lumber industry were gone, most of them never to return.
The CNN video is a wake up for any town that is supported by an extraction industry. The extraction industry is a necessary but problematic issue to the earth and civilization. It leaves scars on the land, ghost towns, polluted water, and more. For the corporate bosses, riches. For the employees, some make a good living while the resources are removed but when they run out, they have to find other occupations or move to fresh pastures. Those who are left have to contend with the wreckage of the damaged environment. Fracking leaves polluted wells in some areas. Some coal operations foul streams. Some coal power plants leave ash pits that flood and acid water kills fish. Mines and gas fields have a finite life. Humans have a way of damaging what it needs to survive. And as much as I wish I had a good answer for it, I don’t. I use plastic and it fills up the land fills. Some plastics break up into microplastics which are too small to be filtered out of the water (in Lake Michigan) which I drink. I fear for what my grandchildren will be forced to deal with in the future.
I’m sure this will sound cold but the world changes. Appalachia went through this years ago when the PRB was brought online. IIRC, the Wyoming coal had less sulphur and burned with less pollutants. Youngstown and Pittsburgh went through this with the steel industry. Detroit did with the auto industry. All those changes affected a lot more people than in Wyoming now. There wasn’t a lot of sympathy for the Rust Belt. People need to move to where the jobs are.
I lived in Gillette in the early 80’s. It was said that there was a pretty girl behind every tree. I see from the video that not much has changed. The economy there is dependant on coal mines and oil wells, business that is quite cyclical. I moved away after the 1984 bust.
Other than coal and oil, there really is not much industry to retrain for, other than ranching.
If I get the joke (there are hardly any trees), that’s pretty funny! [:D]
It took about 5 tries to post this. I kept getting a 403 error?
Eastern Wyoming is pretty much a desert. There’s little rain, harsh summers, harsh winters, and the soil is pretty bad. The place is pretty barren.
When I lived there, the ratio of single men to single women was about 20 to 1…And the trees were few and far between. [sigh]