Today in Labor History June 22, 1922: After guards shot and killed 3 striking miners at the Southern Illinois Coal Company, hundreds of union miners laid siege to the mine, using hammers, shovels and dynamite to wreck equipment and keep the strikebreakers pinned down inside coal cars and behind barricades. After the scabs, guards and superintendent surrendered, the strikers marched them into Herrin, five miles away. Along the way, they encountered a mob of angry miners. One of them shouted, "The only way to free the county of strikebreakers is to kill them all off and stop the breed!" Another said, “We must show the world this ain’t West Virginia,” referring to the Battle of Blair Mountain, nine months prior, in which up to 100 miners were killed in the largest armed domestic conflict since the Civil War. Then the mob grew angrier, striking the scabs with rifle butts, eventually telling them to run for their lives, shooting them as they ran. In total, they killed 19 scabs and the superintendent in the Herren Massacre. Several strikers were eventually arrested and held in the Williamson County jail, which is now a historical museum focusing on the conflict. At the initial inquest, the coroner concluded that the deaths were “due to the acts direct and indirect of the officials of the Southern Illinois Coal Company." Those who were tried for the murders were all acquitted. None of the miners were ever convicted.

Read my article on the Battle of Blair Mountain here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/14/the-battle-of-blair-mountain/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #strike #union #umwa #scabs #massacre #coal #illinois #civilwar #herrin #mining #blairmountain

Today in Labor History June 22, 1914: Anarchists, intending to bomb the Rockefeller Mansion, accidentally blew up the Ferrer Center for anarchist education, killing three anarchists and putting a temporary end to the Modern School. They had been seeking revenge against Rockefeller’s Standard Oil for the Ludlow Massacre (4/20/1914), in which Colorado National Guards and private cops, hired by Rockefeller, attacked a tent colony of 1,200 miners and their families, killing 21, including women and children. The private cops were from the Baldwin-Felts Detective Agency, same ones involved in the Matewan Massacre in West Virginia. From September 1913 through end of May, 1914, up to 200 people died in the Colorado Coalfield War, including 37 cops, soldiers and private detectives fighting for the coal companies, making it one of the deadliest strikes in U.S. history.

Read my full article on the Ludlow Massacre here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2024/04/20/the-ludlow-massacre/

Read my full article on the Modern School movement here: https://michaeldunnauthor.com/2022/04/30/the-modern-school-movement/

#workingclass #LaborHistory #colorado #mining #anarchism #modernschool #franciscoferrer #rockefeller #union #strike #massacre #ludlow #matewan #cops #PoliceBrutality #police #coal

Trump admin’s coal investments assist plants with repeated violations

At least three coal plants have been repeatedly cited for violating environmental regulations.

#coal-plants #coal-power #policy #science #syndication #trump-administration
https://arstechnica.com/science/2026/06/trump-admins-coal-investments-assist-plants-with-repeated-violations/

Coal companies to reap billions more in taxpayer diesel subsidies as Labor approves new mining
By Adam Morton and Dan Jervis-Bardy

Albanese government under pressure to wind back fuel tax credit scheme for multinational miners as analysis shows cost to budget

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/jun/22/mining-tax-credit-scheme-coal-companies-subsidies-taxpayer-refunds-diesel

#Australianpolitics #Laborparty #Coal #Fossilfuels #Mining #Mining #Australianews #Energy #AdamMorton #DanJervisBardy

RE: https://flipboard.com/@climate247/climate-video-09b9fc07z/-/a-BoP6Zs47TI-R4J2-nJdu-Q%3Aa%3A4052135653-%2F0

It's a start, despite the #US paying to stop #wind #power projects. F@$! #petroleum #coal and "natural" #gas

Migrant's multi-million-dollar plan to save a dying outback town
By Isabella Carbone and Arj Ganesan

A decade after the last coal truck rumbled out of Leigh Creek, Baljit Singh Bajwa put millions of dollars on the line to invest in the shrinking mining town.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-21/business-partners-buy-leigh-creek-infrastructure-to-boost-town/106647380

#TourismandLeisureIndustry #Coal #RegionalDevelopmentandPlanning #RegionalCommunities #IsabellaCarbone #ArjGanesan

Measuring Climate Change Progress by Infrastructure Deployment Rather than Temperature

Measuring Climate Change Progress by Infrastructure Deployment Rather than Temperature

In a new video, Climate Targets MISSED. What happens now?, the Just Have a Think YouTube channel discusses a new paper about measuring climate change progress with clean energy targets, not temperature targets, “to avoid the insidious narrative of climate failure, which risks backlash and doomerism.” They go on:

“Although the 1.5°C Paris agreement cannot be saved, a tolerable and safe climate – in which humans and other species can thrive – is still achievable. This will result not from setting distant unachievable goals, but through a more modest approach: to produce enough extra clean energy each year to climb the climate ladder towards a safer future without fossil fuels.”

The host, Dave Borlace discusses how solar installation has vastly exceeded projections for many years and battery prices have fallen by 90% in the last 15 years. He mentions that (paraphrase)

~~”With renewables electricity becomes a manufactured product instead of an extractive fuel product, and manufactured technologies follow a learning curve, getting cheaper with scale and deployment and more deployment drives further cost reductions, while fossil fuels extraction gets harder to reach and more expensive over time as the easier deposits are mined out. Global investment in renewables is now roughly double fossil fuels.” — “Fossil is unique in scale, accounting for about 90% of the CO2 problem (vs. deforestation, wildfires, and soil cultivation mainly), and is uniquely simple to describe and deal with as it is a one way transfer of carbon from the lithosphere to the atmosphere directly by humans”~~

Direct quote from 11:15-12:05 in the video:

“But I do think there’s something quite compelling about measuring progress by practical system replacement rather than simply atmospheric outcomes. Because in the real world it’s looking more and more like the climate emergency won’t be solved by fixating on temperature targets. To the extent that it can be solved it’ll likely be achieved via infrastructure. If we become convinced that the situation is hopeless then political momentum collapses, investment collapses, and public engagement collapses. But according to almost every major energy analysis published over the last few years, the clean energy transition is very clearly not collapsing despite the best efforts of certain political administrations. In fact in most sectors it’s accelerating. The real question now is whether it can accelerate fast enough.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZjNbZJmgA4

Finally here’s a chart for the uninitiated of CO2 concentrations from the last ice ages to now: