From The Hill: America can restore its energy jobs — and reduce emissions
EDITOR'S NOTE: Roberts is a frequent and popular speaker at Kentucky State AFL-CIO biennial conventions.
By CECIL E. ROBERTS
President, United Mine Workers of America
One of the things I learned early in life growing up on Cabin Creek in central West Virginia is that if you don’t take on a bully right from the start, his bullying will only get worse. Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown himself to be a bully on a global scale. President Biden’s ban on Russian energy imports into the United States is the right move, and I applaud him for joining with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and his bipartisan colleagues in the Senate to stop funding the Russian regime as they continue to attack innocent Ukrainians.
Banning Russian energy imports, however, will mean that the United States is now faced with a deficit of energy resources, because approximately 8 percent of our oil has been imported from Russia. The need to ramp up domestic energy production is clear. But that shouldn’t mean we have to throw away decades of progress in dramatically reducing greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. In my view, this provides us with an opportunity to expand traditional jobs in the energy industry and take significant strides to meet the challenge of reducing carbon dioxide emissions while we do so.