I’ve lost track of how many blogs there are that deal in some way with the swirling issues and growing controversies surrounding the coal industry. So does the world really need another one?
Well, I sure hope so.
Coal helped to build industrial America, powered our nation through two world wars, and is still an important part of the economy in coalfield communities from West Virginia to Wyoming. And, as industry supporters and their billboards remind us, coal keeps the lights on in about half of all American households.
But the downside of coal becomes more and more apparent each day.
Over the last three years, a string of mine disasters — Sago, Aracoma, Darby and Crandall Canyon — reminded us of the very real human cost to miners and their families. Just before this past Christmas, the collapse of the TVA coal-ash dam in Tennessee showed us again that there’s really nothing that clean about coal.
Earlier this week, the New York Times’ blog, Green Inc, observed that it’s been a tough week for coal. Among other things, the Times cited the Air Force’s cancellation of plans for a coal-to-liquids fuel plant in Montana, Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s call for a moratorium on new coal plants, and a $140 million Clean Air Act settlement by utilities in Kentucky. (Closer to home, the Times also noted yesterday’s big protests against Massey Energy, and a new lawsuit over contaminated drinking water supplies).
But with a few exceptions, most of the blogging out there about coal comes from either the industry’s most vocal opponents (see Coal is Dirty or the Front Porch) or from coal industry boosters such as Behind the Plug.
So maybe it’s time for one of the few daily newspapers in the country that still covers the coal industry on a regular basis to get into the game, to take the leap into the blogosphere.
We’ll still be doing plenty of coal stories in the daily print edition, as well as longer projects on the industry in the Sunday edition. But the blog format will allow the Gazette to get information out more quickly, and to help foster the growing national — really, international — discussion about the future of coal.
With that in mind, one thing that I want to note is that it seems that there are really two separate discussions going on about coal.
One of them is out there in the broader world. Scientists, policymakers and even investors are becoming more and more convinced that the downsides of coal have to be addressed. One way or the other, coal-fired power’s contribution to global warming must be dealt with. To these folks, the question is: Can coal have a place in our energy mix in a carbon-constrained world?
The other discussion is happening here in West Virginia, and in other coal communities. Locally, the issues are different, and in many ways much more emotional. It’s a battle between families who rely on coal to put food on their tables and send their kids to college, and folks who live near coal mines and are tired of blasting, dust, and water pollution. To these folks, the questions are: How can we protect coal’s future or how can we shut down mountaintop removal?
These two discussions are starting to intersect a little bit. Activists who don’t like mountaintop removal are talking more and more about climate change. But there’s still a huge disconnect between the way the broader world talks about coal and the way we here in the coalfields do.
Perhaps the scientists and activists who understand what coal burning is doing to our climate should try to understand a little more about how a third-generation coal miner in Eastern Kentucky feels. And maybe that coal miner should be a little more open to hearing what the world would be like if we don’t do something about rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Most importantly, maybe the policymakers in Washington need to understand what the economic impact of climate change regulations is going to be on places like West Virginia and Wyoming. And maybe politicians and government officials in places like Charleston, W.Va., need to come to terms with the fact that change is coming to this industry.
I hope this blog contributes a little bit to helping these discussions along. I welcome thoughts, comments, suggestions and criticisms on how to get this job done.
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That was very good.
Very well thought out plan for a blog
Oh, I forgot, now that the coal industry is paying people to blog, it should get interesting.
I’m looking forward to the exchanges your blog will no doubt elicit. ….. Your articles are thorough and thoughtful. Hopefully guests on your new blog will offer the same kind of insights.
‘Coal Tattoo’ is a great choice of names for your new blog (only ‘Coal Patrol’ could have come close to being as good). And if you succeed in creating a forum where enviros, people living downblast from stripmines, and third-generation coal miners can listen to each others instead of talking past each other, you’ll be providing a great public service – even more so if you can get policymakers to understand that until they figure out how to create jobs in the rural economy that pay as well as mining, they shouldn’t be surprised to hear miners and miners’ families angrily defending their livelihoods.
I’ll look forward to more postings by the nation’s hands-down best coal reporter.
According to The Sierra Club …. whose attorneys and analysts have constant daily contact with the most inner workings of the federal government , particulary The Dept.of Energy …. Mountaintop Removal coal contributes an astronomical 4 percent to the current U.S. electricity generation !!!
If this 4 percent contribution is accurate , using pre kindergarden level logic….the absence of Mountaintop Removal coal in our nations power plants would not even be noticed !!!
The lights and our computers would still be on …. as well as all residential , governmental , industrial , and commercial electricity in this country !!!
Welcome to the blogosphere, where the content and quality of the writing just improved by 200% with the addition of Coal Tattoo.
An Informed Reporter and the Need for More Public Discussion
This blog has great potential. First off, Ken Ward Jr. has significant experience reporting issues relating to coal, communities, policy, and environment. This knowledge will prove significant by providing readers with current, accurate, and historic information relating to the above topics.
Secondly, there is significant need for more public discussion relating to coal’s impact and future. The media have been covering such issues for years, but open public dialogue has been constrained by the limited space of Letters to the Editor and over-simplified arguments offered by industry PR campaigns.
Blogs are breaking down such barriers, allowing all of those impacted to share their points-of-view without being censored. I look forward to the frank discussions that will be elicited here and hope they will prove useful in addressing coal’s future in West Virginia and the World.
Love the name, “Coal Tattoo”. Very apropos description of the mark on the mountains by coal mining.
I am a cancer survivor that I believe was environmentally caused by an iodine leak at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation back in the early 1950s, and while I love the idea of preserving God’s ancient Appalachian mountains, and I am cognizant of the global disastrous effects of burning fossil fuels in contaminating our habitat making our world uninhabitable with no viable place for relocation, my main focus is on the atrocious health statistics in WV resulting from Mountaintop Removal. Mountaintop Removal is environmental genocide, and there is nothing anyone can say that justifies that. Unfortunately, by the time the stats catch up with the pollution in decades to come, the children of WV today will be struggling as adults with the explosion of cancer and other chronic diseases.
Well said, perhaps this will eliminate some of the marginalization and get everybody on the same page.
Climate Change is normal. The climate is always changing; as a matter of fact you can not define climate with out accepting that climate changes. Global Warming is a normal cycle of the planet. It was warmer 1000 years ago during the Medievil Warming and 2000 years ago during the Roman Warming and so on and so on. CO2 is not a pollutant; plants thrive on CO2 it like fertilizer to plants. 31,000 plus scientist have signed the Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine Conclusions are the following:
CONCLUSIONS
“There are no experimental data to sup port the hypothesis that in -
creases in hu man hydrocarbon use or in at mospheric carbon di oxide
and other green house gases are causing or can be expected to cause
unfavorable changes in global temperatures, weather, or landscape.
There is no reason to limit hu man pro duction of CO2, CH4, and other
minor green house gases as has been pro posed (82,83,97,123).
We also need not worry about en vironmental ca lamities even if
the current nat ural warming trend con tinues. The Earth has been
much warmer dur ing the past 3,000 years without catastrophic ef -
fects. Warmer weather ex tends growing sea sons and generally improves
the hab itability of colder re gions.
As coal, oil, and nat ural gas are used to feed and lift from pov erty
vast numbers of people across the globe, more CO2 will be re leased
into the atmosphere. This will help to maintain and improve the
health, longevity, prosperity, and productivity of all people.
The United States and other coun tries need to produce more en -
ergy, not less. The most practi cal, econom ical, and environmentally
sound methods available are hydrocarbon and nuclear technologies.
Human use of coal, oil, and natural gas has not harmfully warmed
the Earth, and the ex trapolation of cur rent trends shows that it will
not do so in the foreseeable fu ture. The CO2 pro duced does, how -
ever, ac celerate the growth rates of plants and also permits plants to
grow in drier re gions. An imal life, which de pends upon plants, also
flourishes, and the di versity of plant and an imal life is increased.
Human activities are producing part of the rise in CO2 in the at -
mosphere. Mankind is moving the carbon in coal, oil, and nat ural gas
from be low ground to the atmosphere, where it is available for con -
version into living things. We are living in an in creasingly lush en vironment
of plants and animals as a re sult of this CO2 increase. Our
children will therefore en joy an Earth with far more plant and an imal
life than that with which we now are blessed.”
The above was copied and pasted from the reports conclusion. Testimony before Barbara Boxer’s committee on Climate Change by Professor Roy Spence, workded with Hansen at NASA was that Global Warming as proposed by Hansen was and has always been political and not science based.
I invite everyone to review a little recent history regarding Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining :
Bush Administration Told By Congress and Court: Changing Environmental Rules to Allow Waste Dumps in Waters Violates the Clean Water Act
May 8 , 2002
” Today, both the legislative and judicial branches of government came out in opposition to what the executive branch did to the Clean Water Act on May 3,” said Joan Mulhern, senior legislative counsel for Earthjustice. “This should send a strong message to the Bush administration — and the public — that the administration’s attempt to undermine the Clean Water Act is not only wrong, it is illegal. ”
http://www.earthjustice.org/news/press/002/bush_administration_told_by_congress_and_court_changing_environmental_rules_to_allow_waste_dumps_in_waters_violates_the_clean_water_act.html?print=t
Drastically needed ” CHANGE ” arrived on Jan. 20 , 2009
Nice to find this blog. I work for one of the VERY few federal black lung claimant’s attorneys, Brent Yonts, in Greenville, KY. Can I subscribe to this or how does that work?
[...] when I started Coal Tattoo a year ago, I wrote that there were two conversations going on about [...]