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Despite President Donald Trump's pledge to bring back U.S. coal jobs, hundreds of laid off miners in Wyoming—the nation's largest coal-producing state—are still seeking work.
But these ex-miners might find hope with a most unlikely employer: a wind power company.
The American arm of Goldwind, a Chinese wind turbine maker, has announced a free program to retrain miners to become wind farm technicians, The New York Times reported.
The "Goldwind Works" program kicks off next month in Wyoming with informational meetings.
Coal workers are ideal because they have relevant electrical and mechanical skills as well as experience working under difficult conditions, explained David Halligan, Goldwind Americas chief executive.
"If you're a wind technician, you obviously can't be afraid of heights. You have to be able to work at heights, and you have to be able to work at heights in a safe manner," he told the Times.
Goldwind will supply up to 850 turbines for a project in Carbon County. About 200 workers will be needed to maintain and operate the plant once construction is complete.
Wyoming, which has waged a quasi-war on wind, happens to be the only state that that taxes wind energy production. However, the state also has some of the nation's best on-shore wind resources, with wind power constituting 8 percent of the state's energy.
"If we can tap into that market and also help out folks that might be experiencing some challenges in the work force today, I think that it can be a win-win situation," Halligan said.
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In 2018, there were about 5 million electric cars on the road globally. It sounds like a large number, but with well over a billion cars worldwide, electric vehicles are still only a small percentage.
Nestlé, the world's largest food company, said it will invest up to $2 billion to address the plastic waste crisis that it is largely responsible for.
Screen Time: Conclusions About Effects of Digital Media Are Often Incomplete, Irrelevant or Wrong
By Byron Reeves, Nilam Ram and Thomas N. Robinson
There's a lot of talk about digital media. Increasing screen time has created worries about media's impacts on democracy, addiction, depression, relationships, learning, health, privacy and much more. The effects are frequently assumed to be huge, even apocalyptic.
By Raphael Tsavkko Garcia
Rarely has something so precious fallen into such unsafe hands. Since Jair Bolsonaro took the Brazilian presidency in 2019, the Amazon, which makes up 10 percent of our planet's biodiversity and absorbs an estimated 5 percent of global carbon emissions, has been hit with a record number of fires and unprecedented deforestation.
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Microsoft announced ambitious new plans to become carbon negative by 2030 and then go one step further and remove by 2050 all the carbon it has emitted since the company was founded in 1975, according to a company press release.