The world must move away not just from coal, but from fossil fuels, but we must also protect people working in the fossil fuel industry, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said Tuesday.
Sanders shared his thoughts during a phone interview with the Gazette-Mail on Tuesday night, in conjunction with his campaign rally in Huntington, ahead of the May 10 West Virginia primary.
Sanders trails former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Democratic race for president but has led Clinton in the very limited public polling of West Virginia’s primary. Clinton holds a commanding lead in delegates, but Sanders has vowed to stay in the race until the Democratic convention in July.
In the interview, Sanders discussed a number of West Virginia-specific issues, including: his push to move away from fossil fuels, what he would tell a coal miner who’s losing his job, the economic future of rural America and ways to combat the opioid epidemic.
Here is the full transcript:
Gazette-Mail: I wanted to ask you about some issues that are definitely of national concern but I think are particularly relevant here in West Virginia.
So first off, neither party in West Virginia wants to talk about climate change, and obviously that’s because the coal industry in West Virginia has been dominant for a very long time, providing good paying jobs and lots of tax revenue to the state. It’s struggling a lot right now. What is the coal industry going to look like under President Bernie Sanders?
Sanders: David, what we are going to do is create an economy that works for everybody, not just the 1 percent, and in that process we’re going to create millions of decent paying jobs: Rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, changing our trade policies so that corporations do not send jobs to Mexico or China and raising the minimum wage to 15 bucks an hour.
But what I believe very strongly — and I know that there are people in West Virginia who will be uncomfortable with this feeling — but I believe that climate change is one of the great global crises facing this planet, and we have to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
And that means that we must protect those people in the fossil fuel industry, whether it’s the coal industry or the oil industry or the gas industry, as we make that transformation. And that means that we are going to provide jobs and extended unemployment and educational opportunity for all those who might lose their job.
But the fact is, that as a planet we have got to move away from fossil fuel to energy efficiency and sustainable energy.
OK, I mean that sounds good I guess, providing jobs to these folks as the economy transitions away from fossil fuels. But what are you going to say to a guy who lives in a small town in southern West Virginia, who’s got maybe a high school education, who’s going to lose his $75,000 a year mining job? The only other jobs in the town are McDonald’s. What can you tell him about why it’s necessary?
What we are going to tell him is we are going to create an economy that works for all people by providing affordable loans for small and medium-sized businesses, by investing in the most hard-pressed communities throughout this country. And that we are going to create millions of decent jobs rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure and in energy efficiency and sustainable energy, that’s what I have to say.
But I also have to say to that individual is the present cost is unsustainable, because our moral responsibility is to leave this planet in a way that is healthy and habitable to our children and our grandchildren, and we cannot do that, we cannot do that, if we remain dependent on fossil fuels.
What will happen is there will be more drought, more floods, more extreme weather disturbances, more rising sea levels, more international conflict, and that we cannot allow to happen.
I think there’s a larger point here, I hope. One of the themes of your campaign, I think, is that even when the economy has done well the gains haven’t been fairly shared — you know, the income growth has gone to the wealthy. And I think if you look at that geographically, I think it’s probably true that the vast majority of that growth has gone to cities. So I’m wondering what you see as the future of economies in rural America, whether that’s southern West Virginia that is seeing a coal industry disappear or the Northeast Kingdom in Vermont, or just rural small towns that have seen major industries disappear?
I think the target of federal resources has got to go to those communities that most need the help, and they are certainly many inner cities throughout this country but they are also many impoverished rural communities.
Now when you talk about income and wealth inequality it turns out that West Virginia has one of the highest levels of income inequality of any state in the nation. From 1979 to 2012, the top 1 percent of the people in West Virginia saw their income go up by more than 60 percent while the bottom 99 percent saw their income go down by 0.4 percent.
So when we talk about income and wealth inequality it is especially true, I hear, in the state of West Virginia. We have got to create an economy, therefore, that works for all people, not just 1 percent. And when we talk about creating that economy it means investing in rural America.
I do know about rural America, Vermont is a rural state and what we have got to do, obviously, is create jobs in rural America so that young people can stay in the communities in which they grew up and not have to migrate.
OK. I think another similarity between West Virginia and your state of Vermont is the opioid and heroin epidemic. I know it’s bad there, it’s particularly bad here. We lead the nation in drug overdose deaths. How would your administration increase access to drug treatment facilities and, more broadly, how would your policies toward combating the opioid epidemic be different or be similar to the Obama administration?
Very good question. And you’re right, we are facing an opiate and, in fact, heroin epidemic in Vermont. In West Virginia I know it is very severe and in fact it is severe in many parts of this country. The first thing I think we have to do is to recognize that the way we address this crisis is by recognizing that we are dealing with a health issue, not a criminal issue, and that means that we need a revolution in mental health treatment in this country.
In Vermont, all over this country, it is very, very hard for people to get the treatment that they need when they need it and that has got to change.
So if elected president, we will vastly, we will revolutionize mental health in this country so that people get the treatment when they need it, not after they need it.
So, what is that going to mean in practice, a mental health care revolution?
It means that we will do things like greatly expand community health centers so that in communities all over this country there are treatment facilities available for people who are dealing with addiction or with other mental health crises so that they can walk in the door, regardless of their income, regardless of their insurance matter, and get the care that they need when they need it, not six months from now.
It means making mental health treatment accessible to people regardless of income, that’s what it means.
I know that the Obama administration has made this a priority recently. Any specific areas where you would be similar or different on combating opioids, either before addiction sets in or after the fact, with treating it?
I think we have got to get to the causes of why so many people throughout this country and in many rural areas succumb to opiate addiction. And clearly that has to do with an economy that is not working for them, with unemployment rates that are much too high, where wages are much too low. And we have got to start investing heavily in creating jobs and educational opportunities in the most hard-pressed counties in this country, many of which are in West Virginia.
West Virginia, as you may know, has at least one county where the life expectancy is in fact the lowest in the nation, that’s in McDowell County, where men reach the age, can only expect to reach the age, of 63.
That is really quite unbelievable, and that is related to the issues of addiction and despair and hopelessness that many people feel. These are issues that we’ve got to address, and we address them by investing not only in mental health treatment but in jobs and education and in ways that give people optimism about the future of their lives.
Maybe just one or two more questions.
Where’s the money coming from? How are you paying for more drug treatment and more infrastructure?
Well, two things: As you may know, we are the only major country on earth that doesn’t guarantee health care to all people as a right and I intend to change that by passing a Medicare-for-all, single-payer program.
And of course mental health treatment is part of health care, but we have got to deal with the health care crisis, the mental health crisis, immediately. And one way to do that would be to greatly expand federally qualified community health centers.
And where it comes from is from the fact that we have a grotesque level of income and wealth inequality, where the top tenth of 1 percent now owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. And that means that we have got to raise taxes on the top 1 percent who are doing phenomenally well and on large multi-national corporations who, as a result of a number of loopholes, in a given year, may pay zero in federal income taxes while earning billions of dollars a year in profit.
Reach David Gutman at david.gutman@wvgazettemail.com, 304-348-5119 or follow @davidlgutman on Twitter.