Photo by Vivian Stockman
Coalfield citizen groups are at the state Capitol this hour, announcing plans for “Appalachia Rising,” a Sept. 27 event being billed as a “mass mobilization” against mountaintop removal in Washington, D.C.
According to an announcement of the event:
They are calling for thousands to join them in demanding the Obama Administration abolish surface mining and investment in sustainable economic diversification in Appalachia. Groups aim to mobilize thousands from across the country for a dignified day of action in DC to increase public pressure on elected officials and regulators to ban surface mining.
And on its Web site, the event organizers add:
Appalachia Rising declares that we are not a national sacrifice zone. We will not stand idly by as we see our past and future blasted to rubble, our communities and mountains eliminated, and our neighbors poisoned as coal executives and their shareholders grow rich. Appalachians are not, and never will be, collateral damage. We are proud of our coal mining fathers, hard-working neighbors, and Appalachian past, present and future!
And to be clear, this effort — as mentioned above — says again on its Web site that it is advocating a ban on all surface mining, not just mountaintop removal:
Appalachia is endowed with abundant resources too long plundered by outside interests. We call for the abolition of surface mining, a just transition for coalfield communities, and renewed investment in a prosperous and just economy in Appalachia.
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I will be there with the mountain people on Sept 27. This is an incredible effort to draw attention to the true cost of coal and to stop MTR forever.
See you in DC!
Is there anyone who cares about the jobs aspect of all of this. I just see protest after protest and usually its the same people just calling themselves something different. Green jobs are not happening around here, people need to survive, and to us it appears that Obama wants us all living off the government, in the dark, paying other countries to provide our need.
Times, they are a changing. I will be there with bells on
OK folks … if you don’t have anything more substantive to say and just want to cheer-lead, please take those comments someplace else. Thanks, Ken.
In response to Phyllis’s comments, green jobs are happening around here. Green jobs are not just building wind turbines and solar panels. The largest areas of growth, according to a Dept. of Labor panelist, are in energy auditing and weatherizing/retrofitting homes and business. We have taken steps to provide young people with this training, and there are efforts underway to make these jobs more available, and not just the government funded weatherizing jobs. It’s going to save a lot of money in utilities, which are going to keep rising with or without limits on MTR or CO2.
One of the most ironic things I’ve ever seen was the passenger on a bus in Charleston giving the one-fingered salute to a group of green jobs demonstrators. His riding the bus (public transportation=energy savings) was part of the solution, but somehow he didn’t realize he was promoting green jobs.
Mr. Ken Ward Jr.,
Who made you the “comment police”? I’m pretty sure we’re free to say whatever we like. Whether it be comments of approval, comments of solutions, or comments of disapproval. I really don’t believe it is up to you to decide what anyone else says.
Heather,
Thanks for your reply, and I appreciate your reading Coal Tattoo and taking the time to comment. But there’s a bit of a misunderstanding. This isn’t some free public forum … it’s a Gazette blog.
My bosses here at the Gazette made me the comment police … this is our blog on our Web site, and you have no right whatsoever to comment … we allow comments as long was they meet general guidelines …
You’re free to start your own blog and say whatever you’d like.
But I try to encourage Coal Tattoo to get beyond cheerleading such as “Go coal!” or your comment, “Times they are a changing … I’ll be there will bells on.”
If you have something with more substance to say about mountaintop removal, please do … but I really do try to encourage folks not to just post the rah-rah stuff from either side. I seldom succeed, but I’d like Coal Tattoo to be a little more indepth than that.
Thanks, Ken.
Dear Heather,
This is Ken’s blog and he does an excellent job at keeping commenters’ comments in line — as I well know.
We are very fortunate for his blog…and the extra efforts he puts into it.
Just a note about the jobs issue. The WV coal industry has never been about preserving jobs. The WV coal industry has always been about destroying jobs. That is why MTR exists. MTR doesn’t exist to create jobs. It exists to eliminate them.
The same is true of cutting corners on safety – cutting out ventilation curtains, eliminating overcasts, cutting back rock dusting. It’s all about cutting jobs for miners, not preserving them.
Heather, I have said this to Blankenship trolls, and I’ll say it to you — if you don’t like the way Ken moderates this blog, start your own.
Bill I think your mistaken. MTR exists because it is the only way to mine some reserves. Geology prevents some seams in this state from being mined by other methods other than surface.
One man’s “reserve” is another man’s “better left alone.”
Those 18″ seams on MTR sites are only “reserves” when diesel is cheap and no one enforces the law.
Notice the mission statement’s embrace of “transition.” This is key to the end of MTR, and key to the future of workers dependent on the coal industry for a decent income. Transition means new clean sources of energy. And transition means providing a pathway to an occupational future in meaningful work beyond the untenable coal present.
Jim, as usual, makes an excellent point – the coal is not going to be there forever. Eventually we are going to mine all that it is practical to mine. What then? Abandon the state? Leave the southern coalfields as scarred, pitted, cratered wastelands unfit for human habitation or much of anything else? Even Senator Byrd has come around to the view that West Virginia has to either embrace change or get run over by it.
“New clean sources of energy” ha.
Unlikely to happen, is it? At least, not at the scale to support 330 million people in this country.
Last night the president all but admitted that peak oil is changing the energy business landscape. If that is true, then coal energy is going to get more expensive very quickly. But any politician advocating anti-growth is going to get massacred by business and industry lobby groups and PR. looks ugly to me.
I am pretty convinced that the only viable “transition” is the one envisioned by Thomas Jefferson and many other agrarian prophets: a nation of small farms surrounded by forest or wilderness commons. Anything less would be uncivilized.
Jason, there is much truth underlying what you say; it certainly resonates with me. But I think it’s also true that if US residents reduced their per capita energy use to that of Europeans over a decade, we would have cut carbon emissions enough to meet all of the targets that scientists say we need in the short-term. That would still allow for a lot of gizmos and speed for folks who feel the need!
Just curious – What kind of “sustainable economic diversification” would realistically replace mining in Appalachia? It’s not near ports or markets, poor transportation infrastructure, few centers of commerce, industry, education, lower educated work force. I’d like to see specifics of a viable, realistic plan. If we can replace the energy elsewhere, diversify the local economy, while retaining jobs and controlling costs, great!
Should we have more wind turbines on the mountains? Harvest the forests for biofuels? More gas drilling? More nuclear? These same folks like none of the above. But they need to present workable solutions if they want to gain support. Feel-god gatherings without practical solutions are just feel-good gatherings.
Nobody I know has a problem with wind turbines on the mountains. And why does everyone forget the easiest, cheapest, most cost-effective solution of all? EFFICIENCY. We can reduce our energy demand up to 40 or 50% if we invest in efficiency – which would make any coal coming from MTR totally unnecessary! PLUS it saves us money on our utility bills! I mean, seriously, WHY are we not talking about this more?!
Solar panels and wind turbines for every home. Individual home energy production can work to reduce the need of large grid production as well as energy efficiency.
I think we need to remember that it is inevitable that we will lose coal jobs and coal fired energy since coal is finite. According to a Downstream Strategies study, this decrease in jobs will happen a lot sooner than any of us thought.
I don’t think continuing to extract coal in a manner which is destructive to the land, the people and any future economic development will justify the short term jobs it now provides.
I also think that there will be at least a decade or more of jobs to try to reclaim the land.
Fact is, lots of folks don’t like windmills, the wind doesn’t always blow, and the sun doesn’t always shine. We still want to turn our lights on. But forget energy for a moment. How will folks in Appalachia earn a living without coal? We can’t all be kayak and rafting guides. Seriously, what are they going to do, except perhaps move?
Greenspace, How will folks in Appalachia earn a living without coal? That is THE question. How will your children and grandchildren earn a living without coal? Coal in Appalachia is on the decline. We will mine less coal each coming year AND with less workers. Within 25 years from now we will have lost all coal jobs due to the fact that the remaining coal in WV continues to become more difficult to reach, we can’t compete with Western mines. Are we going to just blow Southern WV up and turn it into a massive coal pit or are we going to use our heads and move forward? The path we are on is backward. Currently, the valuable met coal we are mining in WV is being shipped to China. Chinese steel makers are using it to produce steel to sell to their fabricating industry which is using the steel to produce wind mills to sell back to the US. How absurd! Why is WV not using that met coal right here in WV to get our steel mills rolling again? We should be producing the windmills and selling to the world, not just to re-energize our economy, but to re-energize American manufacturing industries also. An Appalachia that is resigned to take the crumbs of the coal baron while the coal baron plunders our resources for cash and wall street profiteers who have no loyalty to the United States is a doomed Appalachia.
Well, first you don’t want coal mining, and tell us the coals going to run out. Then you want to use it right here in WV. And somehow, despite Obama, EPA and organized labor, you think we can still compete with the Chinese? I don’t see anyone investing their savings in that plan.
Without coal, our biggest assets are our huge forests. With planning, I see the potential for more (renewable) lumbering, wood product and biomass energy production, while preserving large tracts for wildlife, recreation, eco-tourism, etc. Would also like to see biomass production on formerly mined lands. Also potential for more hydro power. But I doubt that all of these things will be enough to sustain the state.
I will be there on September 27, with My wife Phyllis, I am a Coal truck Driver on a surface Mine. and she from a 4th Generation Mining Family. I would love to have solar panels and wind mills to power My Home. Because AEP keeps bumping the rates up to where I cannot afford it.
If a green Job can pay me 60k + a Year for the Next 25 Years wit5h Benefits Great, but I do not see it happening. Appalachia is Coal Country, and Coal keeps Appalachia Alive.
Stopping MTR, does not just affect MTR jobs, you have the suppliers, the maintenance personnel, the store owners in towns, putting Miners out of work, who is going to go to the Civic Center, to Wal Mart, to Kroger, to Go Mart, to Shoney’s, to Dollar General, if no one has a job, how can they spend. We are a Hard Working People, that would rather EARN a PAYCHECK than draw Welfare.
As everyone reading this blog probably knows far better than I, mountain strip mining is destroying the mountains, smothering, contaminating and poisoning the streams and rivers, causing serious flooding, and traumatizing coal area citizens, not only with cancer, emphysema, and asthma, but psychological trauma as well, and it’s doing these things NOW! Every day! The jobs issue is remarkably distorted, given the small and shrinking number of employees involved in mountain strip mining. Here in Tennessee, the latest report is that 382 miners work in mountain strip mining. I understand the numbers are higher in West Virginia and Kentucky, but they are not anything like Big Coal would have us believe. Further, if one compares the environmental, public health, cultural and aesthetic costs to Appalachia, it would make far more sense for the federal government to pay the miners who lose jobs and can’t find other ones, than to subsidize the industry’s sham efforts to develop “clean coal technology.”
Greespace, My point is that the coal market in WV is declining because its becoming less and less economically feasible to extract. We do have met coal, and using what we have right here in WV to produce steel makes sense in that it will create new jobs that lead to a just transition to renewable energy. I agree with your comments pertaining to some of our other assets, but we can do even more than that. Coal is not a sustainable economy, never was, never will be. It’s time to move forward.