The papermill in Courtland is gone. The railcar factory in Cherokee too. Here in north Alabama, people are worn out from watching good jobs disappear.
“We’ve been beat on and beat on and beat on,’’ says Bobby Burch, who’s lived here his whole life.
Which is why what’s happening these days off State Route 20 is so remarkable. Past the Dollar General store, the Wheeler Grove Baptist Church and Dot’s Soul Food restaurant, a new industry is coming to this corner of the Bible Belt. First Solar Inc. plans to start manufacturing solar panels near the cooperage that makes barrels for Jack Daniels Old No. 7 whiskey.
Burch cried when he delivered the news.
Here, in the reddest district in America — where old-fashioned conservatism mixes with new-fashioned economics — people are buzzing about green jobs. They’re talking about them on the Rick & Bubba comedy radio show. Under the stadium lights at Friday night high-school football games. Over Southern sweet tea at Rotary Club lunches.
What they’re talking less about is the uneasy politics of all of this. Republicans outnumber Democrats by 14-to-1 in this part of deep-red Alabama. In 2020, then-President Donald J. Trump — who rolled back 100-plus environmental rules and regulations, to cheers from the oil and gas industries — won 80% of the vote in the state’s 4th congressional district. It was one of his biggest landslides anywhere.
Now Joe Biden, the Democrat in the White House, is helping to bring back jobs. Biden has issued an urgent call to combat climate change and restore environmental policies that Trump dismantled. He and Democrats in Congress authorized hundreds of billions of dollars in federal incentives last year to encourage domestic manufacturing and speed the nation’s transition away from fossil fuels.
Republicans are still trying to undercut Biden’s green program. Just last week, newly installed House Speaker Mike Johnson helped…
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