'The Biggest Coal Giant Has Fallen': Peabody Files for Bankruptcy

[Ferd Berfel]

Good for America, the Future and the Planet - bad for the employees



http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/04/13/biggest-coal-giant-has-fallen-peabody-files-bankruptcy

Activists say bankruptcy highlights need to transition away from fossil fuels

Coal giant Peabody Energy Corporation filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday, signaling what climate advocates hope is a death knell for dirty energy.

"Peabody Energy's bankruptcy is a harbinger of the end of the fossil fuel era," said Jenny Marienau, divestment campaign manager with the climate advocacy group 350.org.

With coal in decline since 2013, the company's financial collapse shows the need to transition into a clean energy future, the group said.

"Peabody is crashing because the company was unwilling to change with the times—they doubled down on the dirtiest of all fossil fuels, and investors backed their bet, as the world shifted away from fossil fuels," Marienau said.

[hunter]

1. Shift away from fossil fuels? No. This is a case of fratricide.

Coal is being killed by its nasty little brother, fracked gas.

[ileus]

2. The best mines I ever went into were Peabody.

Followed by good union Consol mines.

[gladium et scutum]

5. I wonder what will happen

to those thousands of union miners. UMW, through its efforts, raised the income of those men that worked in those ready made black tombs. No such support for them when the have to go to work for Wal-Mart or McDonalds.

[Kip Humphrey]

3. Where Paradise Lay...

bye, bye Mr. Peabody. Good riddance.

[Hortensis]

4. "...more than $2 BILLION in mine cleanup liabilities..."

The group said it would monitor the bankruptcy proceedings to safeguard against Peabody scapegoating its workers or dumping responsibilities on communities near mines, noting that the company "has more than $2 billion in mine cleanup liabilities, nearly $1.5 billion of which are unfunded, including nearly $900 million in Wyoming alone."

[KamaAina]

6. So how many miners just got screwed out of their pensions?

[Ferd Berfel]

7. yep

that's how the bastards do it.

[moondust]

8. Those miners would have more options

open to them if U.S. corporations had not spent the past 30 years shutting down factories and moving millions of jobs to cheap labor markets abroad so that some shareholders (out on the golf course) could get filthy rich and avoid paying taxes.