Chris White Tech Reporter May 04, 2020 1:06 PM ET
Rev. Jesse Jackson is bucking many of the environmentalists who believe natural gas production perpetuates a world in which climate change is disproportionately hurting black communities.
Jackson is prodding local, state and federal officials in Illinois to okay the construction of a $8.2 million, 30-mile natural-gas pipeline built for a community, Axios noted in a report Monday addressing the reverend’s contrarian position.
The Pembroke, Illinois pipeline would shuttle natural gas into an area of the state that suffers from high energy prices, according to Jackson.
“When we move to another form of energy, that’s fine by me, I support that,” Jackson told Axios in February as the issue began heating up. “But in the meantime, you cannot put the black farmers on hold until that day comes.”
Pembroke residents have a median income of $28,922 and rely on a combination of propane, wood stoves and space heaters for heat during Illinois winters, media reports show. (RELATED: Civil Rights Leaders Rail Against Enviro Activists, Say Natural Gas Benefits Black Communities)
Another resident — Cathy Vanderdyz, a city clerk in the area — told Axios that she pays between $500 and $800 to heat her home over a two month period. Jackson got involved due in part to a request from Mark Hodge, mayor of Hopkins Park, a town in the area.
The mayor told Axios that businesses refuse to come to the area because local energy prices are too high.
“It’s not on my radar at this point, not to say in the future it would not be,” Hodges said of climate change. “My main concern is cutting our energy costs out here.” Customers have to pay for a some of the cost of delivering such pipeline access under current regulations.
Pembroke residents must pay $3.2 million of the estimated total $8.2 million pipeline extension, according to Nicor Gas, the company behind the project. Each household would have to pay more than $8,000 upfront for access, Axios notes. Illinois’s state legislature is considering a bill designating Pembroke as a “designated hardship area,” which would allow Nicor Gas to pay the entire cost.
Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, and National Urban League President Marc Morial have said in the past that they oppose an abrupt move away from fracking, a technique producers use to extract natural gas from shale. They said the technique for producing natural gas helps black people who struggle with high energy prices.
Morial, Jackson and Sharpton’s comments came after the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People warned its local chapters in 2019 that oil companies are supposedly trying to manipulate them into supporting their products.
Nearly one in five households are forced to go without food to pay their energy bill, the Energy Information Administration noted in a 2018 report.
Playing both sides against the middle, an efficient form of blackmail (no pun intended – I think.)
The main thing disproportionately hurting black communities, is bourgeois liberal eco -warriors.
Jackson will eventually accept direct energy subsidies for “communities of colour” and some campaign contributions… and maybe a lakefront house (next to Bernie’s).
Look on the bright side, high energy costs means less coke, chips and burgers, less obesity and thus less COVID-19 deaths. Win-win for communities of colour already disproportionately hit by sars-cov-2 due to comorbidity.
Why don’t they ask Bill Gates to fund the whole effort? He then could get publicity as to the ‘help’ he is doing for the community, and the community gets their pipeline with getting stuck with the cost. Sounds like a ‘win-win’ to me . . .
You advocate keeping people so poor they can’t afford a burger and coke, just so they aren’t obese, therefor they’re healthy?
Man, that’s some seriously messed up logic there.
Substandard educational curricula teaching agendas rather than subjects is also a big part of the problem. People that aren’t taught to think, read, or know any history have a much harder time coping.
US Democrats have been hard at work keeping black Americans on their “plantations” since 1828. Nothing has changed in regards to that indentured servitude, even after Republican Abe Lincoln and a Republican Congress freed them from slavery from angry Democrats at the close of the Civil War. Energy costs are one of the ways the Democrats intend to shackle not just Black America, but white working class America as well, in theDemocrat’s “equal misery for all” Feudal 2 class system economic social structure.
Ahhh just give Jesse and Al that vig (as per usual to grease things along) and let our lower socioeconomic class get a leg up.
I am amazed and astonished that these two charlatans are actually doing something good for black people, for a change. I have to wonder if Trump delivering concrete economic help to blacks in the way of jobs (before COVID, anyway) and Opportunity Zones, among other things Dems talked about but never delivered, has forced
the Talkers to Do something that actually helps rather than hurts. If so, it’s about time.
If they have some other scheme up their sleeves, well, at least it will help poor blacks and the earth rather than hurt them both as windmills and solar arrays are doing.
What hurts the poor/unskilled the most are minimum wage laws. It makes them too expensive to hire. So they will never learn the skills to climb the ladder and makes them dependent on the government. Exactly where progressives want them to be.
RIGHT YOU ARE, …… Robertvd, …… paying $15/hour to hamburger “servers” at Berger King, McDonalds or Wendy’s means that they have to serve lots of hamburgers each and every hour they are working ….. just to pay for their $18 to $20 per hour cost to their employer.
What it means is that employers find it cost efficient to replace physical labor with machines.
So if all employers are subject to the same wage laws, burgers get a bit dearer and folks get a decent minimum wage. On the other side of the counter they may have 1/2 liter of coke instead of 1 liter and two burgers instead of three. Win – win.
Greg,
These laws are national, not by state. Look at the living costs in the different states. There are vast differences. These laws affect all businesses, not just national burger chains. For small businesses, it’s doubtful the owners are able to make $15 an hour, let alone have the ability to pay that to their workers. You end up with far fewer small businesses which equals far fewer jobs.
Add to that the incentives provided for the national chains to automate, and you have killed tens of thousands of jobs so the Libs can feel good about making OTHER PEOPLE PAY for their notions of “fairness”.
Another side effect is that teens don’t get jobs and don’t learn things like how to work, show up on time, do a good job and you have a terrible ripple effect in the entire nation.
After NY passed their $15 mandatory minimum wage, many business even in a high cost area like NYC closed. The bar where AOC worked had to close because they could not afford to pay that wage and stay in business. But, it made Libs feel good and virtuous and they never bother to look at the consequences of their actions so they never feel any guilt whatsoever.
Nice gig they’ve got going if the most important thing in life is feeling smugly superior to others who actually do things, like business owners creating jobs. It takes remarkable egos to be blind to the damage caused by their policies but Libs sure do have egos up to the task.
$15 Minimum Wage Sparks A Jobs Recession In New York
https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/minimum-wage-new-york-jobs-recession/
MINIMUM WAGE
The Racist History of Minimum Wage Laws
https://mises.org/wire/racist-history-minimum-wage-laws
By the 1960s, many African-Americans were employed as farmers — at least partly due to this being one of the few remaining fields of work that was not yet subject to wage regulations. This changed in 1967, when the government extended the minimum wage laws to American farmers as part of the “War on Poverty.” Black farmers who were accustomed to making a modest $3.50 per day were now legally required to be paid $1.00 per hour — a tremendous increase in wages. The effect of this law was immediate and undeniable. An estimated 25,000 farm workers were put out of work in the Mississippi Delta region alone.4 Black farmers were not oblivious to the cause-and-effect at play. “That dollar an hour ain’t worth nothing,” said the wife of one day-laborer. “It would have been better if it had been 50 cents a day if you work every day….
Greg, if you don’t think wage levels are set by worker productivity and their employer’s ability to charge customers for the product of their workers’ labour, why not advocate setting minimum wages to $20 an hour? $200? $2,000?
If you understand why those numbers would cause unemployment, then you should understand why ANY minimum wage laws creates unemployment.
KcTaz – May 5, 2020 at 1:53 pm
KcTaz, everything you stated in your above post was “right on the money” …… and the most damning one, in my opinion, is your above statement.
The “minimum wage” teen problem is rooted in another one of the Libs “feel good and virtuous Laws” which pretty much prohibit anyone from employing any adolescent for part time work.
And iffen one can’t hire a kid (6 to 16 years old) to do an “odd” job (deliver papers, wash dishes, mow lawns, pick up trash, etc., etc.) ….. they grow up to be 18 year olds without one (1) lick of work experience and then the Libs demand they be paid $15/hour when most are incapable of …. “pouring piss out of a boot with the directions on the bottom of the heel”.
If you read the transcripts when minimum wage laws were first introduced. Pricing blacks out of the labor market was precisely the reason being given in support of minimum wage laws.
That’s the Social Justice Warrior (SJW) modus operandi. They take extreme umbrage at any supposed slight toward any supposedly oppressed group. It is not necessary for the SJWs’ purposes that the supposedly oppressed group itself is actually offended.
My favorite example is the white girl who wasn’t allowed to give free yoga classes at the University of Ottawa because of so-called cultural appropriation. link The thing that makes it delicious is that yoga exercises, as practiced today, have their origins in Europe. link
Similar to this story of “cultural appropriation”.
Much like the ginned up anger regarding native American mascots for sports teams.
When you go out and talk to actual Indians, they don’t mind. Some of them are even proud of the connection.
Like the ban on dwarf throwing. The dwarfs were well pissed off about losing one of the few employment they were perfectly suited to. No one was throwing any dwarfs which did not want to be thrown. The “offense” was all by proxy , with total disregard for the opinions and livelihoods of those they PRETENDED to be “defending”.
Offense by proxy should be made illegal.
“Pembroke residents must pay $3.2 million of the estimated total $8.2 million pipeline extension, according to Nicor Gas, the company behind the project. Each household would have to pay more than $8,000 upfront for access, Axios notes. Illinois’s state legislature is considering a bill designating Pembroke as a “designated hardship area,” which would allow Nicor Gas to pay the entire cost.“
Help me understand, was there a law forcing an assessment on residents that they had to pay upfront installation costs?
And now a new law that allows the gas company to bake those costs into the rate Pembroke residents pay for gas?
Jessie Jackson does not work for free. I smell a shakedown somewhere…geez I am skeptical here. I wonder what the interest rate charged in the total gas rate?
In the old days before the Green idiots started protesting everything a gas company would apply for a permit to install a gas line. The plans would be approved and the line installed. The low price of the install would be amortized over 20 years to the rate payers and the costs would be differed.
Now the gas company must apply for the permit. Do an environmental assessment. Do a carbon study over the life of the pipeline. Attain a number of law firms to fight the push back from the environmental Greens. Attend court repeatedly to defend their project. Hire security squads to prevent the protesters from stopping the pipeline installation. Then finally if they actually get to install the pipeline to the customers they will be able pass on ALL the additional costs to the rate payers. Sometimes the gas company just gives up because of the continued stupidity.
Last winter there were gas curtailments in New York state during some of the worst cold weather. When the pipeline company curtails gas usage something has to give because they can not deliver enough gas to meet the demand. In this case it was the major users of this supply that were burning it in large Co-generation turbine generators. So those turbine units had to cut power production so the home owners could heat their homes. Some power outages were the result of these cutbacks and at those low temperatures freezing to death was a possibility due to no power. So why was this curtailment happening and what was the pipeline doing to stop these curtailments.
Three years ago the major gas pipeline supplier to this region identified the increase in usage of natural gas due to the closure of coal power plants and the installation of Co-generation plants to make up for the power production. This pipeline company applied for a river crossing permit across the Albany River to run a larger pipe to this area in need. The Sierra Club was just one of the environmental groups that filed protest against this river crossing. After a bitter long court battle the court and the state ruled that this river crossing would be harmful to the areas environment. Permit denied take that you fossil fuel mongers. So when it gets cold now I hope that EVERYONE in the affected area has those little gasoline generators to keep the power on enough so your house will not freeze because they are going to need them. The insanity will continue until society is broken.
Who knew! Green is expensive. One coal/gas powered plant versus thousands of wind farms and solar farms + infrastructure and that same coal/gas powered plant not making a profit.
Only a strong economy can pay for that nonsense. Progressives like AOC will get you in the dark.
Follow the money! The cited advocates for the gas pipeline into the cited area are well known for fund raising of a questionable nature. I like the notion that this pushes against the dictates of the Democrats and the NAALCP, but wonder what they are really up to. Day 46 of quarantine, now modified, and soon off to supermarket for a grand adventure! What times we live in. Stay sane and safe.
Everything those in power can take away from you is a Privilege not a Right. Anybody thinks the Founding Fathers did not know what infectious diseases where? Is it mentioned anywhere in the Bill of Rights?
Robertvd, I am an American Citizen, but living in Argentina. You have no idea how special the US Constitution is, and more so for the Bill of Rights! Much of the government orders, here and in the USA, are creeping advances of socialism. Stay sane and safe.
Not many people can read those meters these days!
Pricing people out of affordable power is not progressive.
But, but, but, ….. the Progressives are not the least bit interested in allowing the poor folks to progress up the socio-economic “ladder”, ….. so they are not interested in “providing affordable power” to the under class.
“Keep them barefoot, hungry and uneducated and they will do whatever you tell them.”
House? You were lucky to have a HOUSE! We used to live in one room, all hundred and twenty-six of us, no furniture. Half the floor was missing; we were all huddled together in one corner for fear of FALLING!
-Monty Python The Four Yorkshiremen
Donald Trump Jr., time for you or your business to help these folk out. Pay their tab bud.
Why should Trump Jr pay? He wasn’t the one forcing them into “renewables”. Pelosi, Schumer, AOC… they should pay.
Is the siting of large scale renewables a forced relocation agenda?
Jeff,
Exactly! Also, Soros, Steyer, Gore, Bloomberg, and all the usual super-wealthy suspects and Dem. politicians.
If it’s not in the flash card set of talking points of the Party, then it will not happen. How about another hike in the minimum wage or some more preschool funding?
Transgender bathrooms and increased affirmative-action quotas.
Germany’s failed climate goals should be a wake-up all for governments everywhere, but
Americas plans scarily resembles Germany’s failed climate goals. Germany, Australia, and Denmark are fighting it out for the honor of paying the highest prices for electricity which is contributing to growing populations of homeless and poverty.
To KEEP its energy costs high, America is following failed efforts, instead of first discovering an affordable green replacement to the “power” and conveniences currently provided to every known earth-based infrastructure, as well as the thousands of products developed from fossil fuels that dominate most people’s lives in industrialized countries and emerging markets.
https://www.cfact.org/2019/07/29/germany-went-totally-green-too-quickly/
This is an excellent article on why wind and solar won’t and can’t replace fossil fuels, now or ever.
The $2.5 trillion reason we can’t rely on batteries to clean up the grid
Fluctuating solar and wind power require lots of energy storage, and lithium-ion batteries seem like the obvious choice—but they are far too expensive to play a major role.
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611683/the-25-trillion-reason-we-cant-rely-on-batteries-to-clean-up-the-grid/
…But much beyond this role, batteries run into real problems. The authors of the 2016 study found steeply diminishing returns when a lot of battery storage is added to the grid. They concluded that coupling battery storage with renewable plants is a “weak substitute” for large, flexible coal or natural-gas combined-cycle plants, the type that can be tapped at any time, run continuously, and vary output levels to meet shifting demand throughout the day.
Simple Physics spells doom for unreliable renewables.
The Clean Power Plan Will Collide With The Incredibly Weird Physics Of The Electric Grid
http://bit.ly/2v5FJip
Grid Reliability: DOE Throws Down Red Flags On Unreliable Wind And Solar
http://bit.ly/2Z9HdG6
Poverty Kills! It really does. Not the thought of being poor. Not lack of self esteem but real, don’t have enough poverty. Only being able to afford low quality food shortens your life. Eating food that has started to go bad because you don’t want to throw it away shortens your life. Being cold when the weather is cold and hot when the weather is hot shortens your life. Not being able to take a vacation or not being able to take one that allows the stress to leave your body shortens your life. Not being able to sleep because your mattress is too hard your bedroom too noisy and hot and loud shortens your life. And so on. If you really care about people raise their standard of living.
In the last 30 days, Michael Moore’s launched his new movie pointing out that intermittent green energy is neither affordable nor good for the environment; and now Jesse Jackson wants to bring affordable, consistent natural gas to a poor community which has been hurt by democrat energy policies. After years of denying science and economics, have 2 leftist heroes had an epiphany?
“ After years of denying science and economics, have 2 leftist heroes had an epiphany?”
They sure have.
“ epiphany – a manifestation of a divine or supernatural being.”
And their epiphany is the realization that the next General Election will be a “landslide” for Donald Trump …… and Jackson and Moore are getting their “ducks” in line early in the game to gain a political advantage..
I don’t really want to know what Jesse Jackson says, no matter what it is.
I use a combination of wood and propane. As I age, been cutting back on the wood (pun intended) and using more propane. Just got a delivery today, but they only did about 10 gallons and the 2 100 gallon tanks are not even half full. The driver said they told him to only deliver 10 gallons.
The last time he filled it (in January), the cost was $2.40/gal, now it’s $2.04/gal. I think I see what’s going on here. They’ll wait and fill it up next fall when it goes for $2.80/gal…
Being an unfortunate native of IL, I have watched the Chicago politicians wreck the energy suppliers downstate (the other state of IL) since the ’70s.
Our electric utility suppliers can’t legally own their own generating plants anymore. The rate structuring is insane, and the service is often interrupted due to renewables and their chaotic operation.
I guess JJ can pander for votes 2 counties south of Cook County and figure he’s got the black rural vote in little egypt too, but most of us involved in agriculture (black, white, or whatever) tend to be bigger fans of Abe Lincoln’s party than we are of Lyndon Johnson’s party when it comes to civil rights for all.
IMHO, I also find Truman to be the last honest Democrat to complete a term without getting killed during a parade and Eisenhower to be the last full-term president who understood the science & technology issues of his day.
How will any of those potential customers be able to come up with $8,000 up front to get gas? They already have to pay for a furnace conversion if they are lucky, or a new furnace if they aren’t. In a free economy (certainly not Illinois) the provider would make the investment and offer the product or service.
The green burden should not be hoisted on the poor.
Hoisting the green burden onto the poor here and abroad is all part of the plan to eliminate people from the Earth. The easiest humans to eliminate are the poor, especially, if they are brown or black. Not that they aren’t working on eliminating poor whites here and in Europe. The Green Energy Plan suits their Malthusian goals perfectly.
David Attenborough says sending food to famine-ridden countries is ‘barmy’
Veteran broadcaster has called for a debate on population control
http://bit.ly/2Okcchp
Then, there’s this which underpins the entire AGW/CC CO2 is evil scam.
“The Earth has cancer and the cancer is Man.”
– Club of Rome,
premier environmental think-tank,
consultants to the United Nations
Heartbreaking interview last year with the head of New York City’s Public Housing Tenants group.
350,00 mostly poor, lower middle class folks who get their heat and hot water from heating oil-fueled boilers.
If they were allowed to switch to natgas, each family would save up to 100 bucks per month in heating bills.
Governor sez no.
The city should be a proactive landlord for the green cause, just as they mandate to the private sector property interests.
Amazing that they would miss a chance to signal environmental virtue and simultaneously reduce their tenants’ utility bills (widely publicized) with some state grants for infrastructure improvements in neighborhoods where the air pollution is most concentrated…
Oh, wait… Did you say NYC?
Insane Leftists policies have always hurt the poor and the black community the hardest…
1) Leftist labor union laws destroyed the US heavy industry sector costIng millions of black jobs.
2) Leftist welfare programs which incentivize single-parent households have destroyed the black family.
3) Leftist immigration policies allowed 20 million illegal aliens into the US costing the black community millions of jobs.
4) Leftist teacher unions destroyed the US educational system and bankrupted large cities.
5) Obamacare caused insurance premiums to increase $2,500/household/yr.
6) Medicaid/care programs have bankrupted the US (unfunded liabilities $100 trillion) which hurts the black poor the most.
7) Leftist excessive regulation compliance costs ($2 trillion/yr) have destroyed private sector jobs, disproportionately hurting blacks.
Rev. Jackson needs a new party, not a new pipeline.
This issue is as old as the global warming scam – since the 1980’s, phony green energy scams have driven up energy costs, especially hurting the poor. I recall conversations and correspondence with Niger Innes about this subject when he was at CORE, circa 2008.
My expertise is energy, and I’ll compare my career achievements with anyone on the planet.
Every household in the USA and Canada should be connected to natural gas pipelines – natural gas is the cheapest and cleanest fuel for heating and power generation. The fact that green radicals have blocked natural gas pipelines from parts of the country, especially the US Northeast, is a criminal act that does nothing to help the environment, and is actually just more green sabotage of our economy and the lives of our poorest people.
“After a battery of tests, my physicians identified the issue as Parkinson’s disease, a disease that bested my father” — Jesse Jackson, Nov 17, 2017