Dirty Coal vs Clean Energy: Guess Who's Winning?

Jim Hightower
Tue, 20 Jan 2026 23:00:00 -0800
Opinion

WARNING: News headlines can give you a headache.

For example, take typical headlines on today's environmental stories: "Earth's Climate Getting Catastrophically Hotter, Faster," "Greenhouse Pollution Increasing Again," "President Calls Global Warming a Hoax," "Fracking Executive Now Runs Energy Department," "U.S. Funding New Coal Plants," "White House Abruptly Cancels Wind-Power Projects."

Whew! My head hurts. The negativity in such headlines tells people that grassroots activism demanding clean energy and environmental sanity is futile, for the government has been shanghaied by a political cabal of corporate executives.
Updated: Wed Jan 21, 2026

WARNING: News headlines can give you a headache.

For example, take typical headlines on today's environmental stories: "Earth's Climate Getting Catastrophically Hotter, Faster," "Greenhouse Pollution Increasing Again," "President Calls Global Warming a Hoax," "Fracking Executive Now Runs Energy Department," "U.S. Funding New Coal Plants," "White House Abruptly Cancels Wind-Power Projects."

Whew! My head hurts. The negativity in such headlines tells people that grassroots activism demanding clean energy and environmental sanity is futile, for the government has been shanghaied by a political cabal of corporate executives.

But wait — while it doesn't get front page treatment, a bracing wind of change is blowing in from the countryside! It turns out that producers, funders and consumers of alternative energy have not rejected a brighter, sustainable future just because profiteers and politicians command us to follow them off the cliff.

Indeed, here's a surprising development that the calcified defenders of dirty monopolized fuels could not have imagined only 10 years ago: Even in the fossilized Kingdom of Texas, solar power now provides more electricity to our people than does King Coal! Despite relentless efforts by our corrupt governor and top Republican officials to rig the marketplace against renewable energy, solar arrays and wind turbines are soon to pass Big Oil's fracked gas as the top supplier of electricity to Texas homes and businesses.

Here's an uplifting headline for you: Last year, wind, sun and other renewable sources surged past coal as America's number one source of electric power. As a leading climate scientist concludes: "We are at the end of the fossil fuel economy." So, keep pushing.

Sing Along to "The Wall Street Bankers' Hard Time Blues"

One of the most obnoxious sounds in nature is the whine of a Wall Street banker. It's a cross between the tantrum of a peevish brat and the blathering of a sputtering old plutocrat.

Consider the long, piteous whimper of Jamie Dimon, potentate of the powerful JPMorgan Chase banking empire. He constantly whines about laws to restrict banker greed, even toting around a Rube Goldberg-style cartoon depicting a tangle of rules that, he squeals, is choking poor Wall Streeters like him.

Before you break into tears about Jamie's plight, though, notice that he and his bank are not choking on rules, but gorging on riches. Dimon himself pocketed — get this — $770 million in personal pay last year.

Golly, we should all suffer like poor Jamie!

And he's hardly alone in singing the "Talking Banker Blues," for that elite clique has long pouted that they're paupers compared to the billionaires of high tech. So, mounting an odd boardroom "labor action," bankers have been getting drastic pay hikes. The CEO of Citigroup, for example, recently set a new bottom-line expectation for top-floor bankers: A 2025 paycheck of more than $100 million!

How can a business lavish such a windfall on one guy? Easy. The CEO slashed tens of thousands of bank employees from Citi's payroll last year, so he got their pay.

Woody Guthrie once wrote a parody of such predatory behavior, singing "I am a jolly banker, A jolly banker am I." Today's Wall Street aristocrats are jolly, too, bloating their extravagant wealth by taking wages and livelihoods from thousands of their own employees. As Woody might sing, that's how inequality "happens."