Q&A with Jay Rockefeller

by Thomas Harding

OBSERVER: In October, after almost 10 years of fundraising and organizing, you opened the Blanchette Rockefeller Neurosciences Institute on the West Virginia University campus in Morgantown. Why was this important to you?

ROCKEFELLER: This will be the only research institute in the world working on memory and Alzheimer’s. The plan is to try and find a predictor for Alzheimer’s, a test people can take. Right now it can only be done post-death. It is important to me personally, because I saw my mother gradually eroding as a human being for 12 years, and then finally dying. There are so many people faced with this, millions across the country.

It is extremely hard to talk about, even as many times as I have. You have certain memories . . . it is very, very hard, and it is important that it be hard. My mother died in 1992, and that feels as if it was yesterday. I bring great passion to this. We are trying to cure human suffering around the world. This is a stunningly motivating and intense process. I am very optimistic and proud that is in West Virginia.

OBSERVER: You talk about developing the coal in West Virginia and you support the dramatic reduction of greenhouse gasses by as much as 65 percent of 1990 levels by 2050. How is it possible to have both?

ROCKEFELLER: We all want to solve climate change. I have put myself in a very interesting position in West Virginia. There are only 16 states that produce coal. You say the words “coal” or “clean coal” and people laugh at you. I don’t. I start with the assumption that we do not have clean coal, and that the object is to make coal clean by virtually eliminating CO2 emissions. It can be done, like the moon shot by [President] Kennedy. We could do it in three years. It would be a huge national project.

OBSERVER: If clean coal was found to be not commercially viable, would you declare that West Virginia should not pursue a future in coal?

ROCKEFELLER: I am not willing to grant that first point. I am absolutely confident we can. Coal can be clean. We have 250–400 years supply of it. We can wipe out the use of Middle East oil.

OBSERVER: Given your urgent commitment to reduce emissions that cause climate change, what happens if it takes more than three years to make clean coal commercially viable?

ROCKEFELLER: If it doesn’t [take three years], we will have to spend more time. Because it is worth it. It produces well over 50 percent of the electricity that people use. We can’t say that it is not worth it. We have to do research to clean it up, spend a lot of government money, as much as 12 or 13 billion dollars.

OBSERVER: You voted in favor of the 2005 Energy Bill which called for increased electrical capacity in the Mid-Atlantic region. Are you in favor of the PATH transmission line project?

ROCKEFELLER: I look at it two ways. If we were starting the world all over again and we wanted to put the lines up, I would say no. But then look at it the other way. If we have brownouts, which I guarantee we will, particularly as it gets warmer in the summer and cooler in the winter, we will have shut-downs and enormous electricity shortages—which I promise is going to happen—I don’t think people want that either. In this imperfect world in which nothing is entirely fair, and in which not all things are solved, we must be willing to sacrifice.

OBSERVER: I have heard you say before that this is part of our history, West Virginia being dumped on by the rest of the country.

ROCKEFELLER: You know what I think, states are defined by elections and football teams, but if took those two things away you have something called America. It is not a question of what happens in West Virginia compared to Colorado, but what is happening to us, the American people. Things can’t be sorted in total equality. We must sort out the problems that will kill us, like Alzheimer’s, or freeze us, like the total inability to heat [our homes].

OBSERVER: If it is a national problem, why must West Virginians pay for it?

ROCKEFELLER: Because this is going on around the country. We tend to focus on what happens in our own backyard, but this is happening all over the country with the same kind of problems. Everyone has their fights. That is why I like to think of America as a country, and West Virginia is a hugely important part of that country.