Blue-Collar Families are Kentucky’s Green Energy Future!
Steel. Aluminum. Coal. These are some of the industries in Kentucky that have shaped not just our state but helped build the nation. But these industries have not always made good on their promise to put back into the community what they have extracted from it.
When it comes to advocating for directly impacted communities, few techniques are as effective as storytelling at moving decision makers from understanding what should be done to knowing why it must be done. Telling our stories is how we move a conversation above and beyond just the data and facts, connecting decision makers to the reality of their decisions' impact.
Kentucky Chapter staff recently realized the opportunities that led all of us to working at Sierra Club came directly from how our families were shaped by jobs in energy and industry. Tom’s family mined coal for generations in southeastern Kentucky. His granddad led the United Mine Workers of America in Jenkins, KY. Sarah’s grandfather worked at Ford Motor Company in Louisville, one of those good, family-sustaining, union jobs that provided a foundation for future generations. Julia is the daughter of a steelworker; when her dad first started in the mills, an entry-level job included shoveling coal and cleaning slag out of open hearth furnaces. We quickly revealed the connections that link so many working class Americans: Tom’s family mined the coal that fueled the Pittsburgh mill Julia’s dad worked in, which produced the steel for the automotive industry where Sarah’s grandfather earned his living.
Our families chose hard work because they believed it would change the future for their children and grandchildren, and we are proof that it did. Tom is the first male in his family to never go underground in the mines. Sarah’s grandfather, who was raised in poverty, watched his children graduate college, buy their own homes and raise his grandchildren in economic security. Julia’s dad sent his three children to college, and his work ethic continues to inspire his kids and grandkids. Corporations have never made the same investment in our shared future; their promise was to their investors who have profited while the environment and our communities have suffered. These experiences are what motivate us to fight so passionately for a cleaner, greener industrial sector.
For the first time in 45 years, Kentucky stands on the brink of a transformative opportunity with the potential establishment of a new green primary aluminum facility. It has the potential to create approximately 1,000 permanent jobs with advanced wages, represented by the United Steelworkers, and 5,500 construction jobs. But a renewable energy supply is the key. Being able to secure affordable electricity from renewable energy sources is the primary need for the successful buildout of this smelter in Kentucky, and it will be the need of all industrial jobs of the future.
For the last few decades at least, working class families have been presented with an impossible choice: industrial jobs or environmental protections that ensure not just our access to clean water and clean air, but to a liveable planet. The new proposed Green Aluminum smelter is proof that this was a false choice. As industrial innovation promises to transform Kentucky’s workforce and economy, the availability of abundant, reliable, inexpensive renewable energy will be the primary question for all stakeholders, including workers. It’s often said that Eastern Kentucky’s massive coal reserves powered America’s industrialization, but we know it is the laborer that turns coal into power. Working class families need to tell lawmakers to stop fighting for the preservation of the past when it’s time for bold action for the future.
Sierra Club’s Industrial Transformation campaign and our other organizational partners are advocating at every level for a new approach to industrial policy that replaces handouts for corporate polluters with protections for people and the planet. We seek comprehensive solutions that create good-paying, clean manufacturing jobs, cut industrial pollution, and build climate resilience for those hardest hit by the fossil fuel economy. This transformation is driven by data and facts to change minds but we need your help to move their hearts. We need bold action from our lawmakers because we know the power of reliable, family-sustaining, union jobs to change the trajectory of a family for generations. We also know that the industrial jobs of the future require clean energy. Help us change the narrative and tell decision makers to move off of fossil fuels and add industrial-scale clean energy!