Thread by @maryannehitt

One word we didn't hear in the debate last night: coal. Our first debate with real questions on climate and environmental justice was also the first I recall with no mention of coal, a sharp contrast to Trump's grandstanding about coal 4 years ago. Why? 1/ nytimes.com/2020/10/05/us/…

Trump promised to revive coal but couldn't overcome public demand for clean energy, a decade of advocacy that's moving us @BeyondCoal, and the reality that renewable energy is cheaper than coal - I talked to @NPR's Morning Edition about that this week. 2/ npr.org/2020/10/19/925…

Just this week, one of the nation's two biggest coal companies, Arch Resources, announced it's speeding up its "exit strategy" from the thermal coal market - that's the coal burned in power plants and is the vast majority of coal mined in the US. 3/ stltoday.com/business/local…

This month we saw the largest coal plant retirement announcement by a utility in US history, when Vistra - the #1 climate polluter in the US power sector - announced it will retire all its coal plants in IL and OH. I wrote about it with @hollybendermsn: 4/ sierraclub.org/articles/2020/…

Last month we hit a big milestone - 60% of US coal plants announced to retire since we launched @BeyondCoal in 2010 (and we're on track to retire them all by 2030). I talked about that with @anthawilliams & @RevYearwood on the @BloombergDotOrg podcast: 5/ bloomberg.org/blog/follow-th…

That brings us to fracking and oil, Trump's favorite fossil fuels this election. The same forces that came for coal are coming for them - cheaper clean energy, communities fed up with pollution that's making us sick, and public demand for climate action. 6/nytimes.com/2020/07/06/bus…

As a West Virginian, I'll say this once more for people in the back - we need to prioritize a fair economic transition for fossil fuel workers and communities as we create thousands of clean energy jobs. Biden must do that. Let's go win this election. joebiden.com/climate-plan/ END