There’s an op-ed in this weekend’s Gazette-Mail that is worth a look — and worth a detailed read by our region’s political leaders. It’s by West Virginia native Lou Martin, who teaches history now in western Pennsylvania at Chatham University. Lou writes of a “crisis in the making” in Boone County, where coal is such a big part of the economy, yet good coal seams are playing out and competition from other regions threatens future production levels:
In May, CNN Money reported that 3,800 of the county’s 8,600 employed people worked in the mining industry. And a report by economists at WVU and Marshall titled “The West Virginia Coal Economy 2008″ reported that 60 percent of the county’s roughly $35 million in property tax revenue came from coal. While those figures certainly speak to the importance of coal to Boone today, they also represent the potential for devastation when the coal companies leave. Imagine when half of those jobs and tax revenues disappear as Downstream Strategies predict they will. Boone County will be left with slurry ponds, “reclaimed” mountains and dirty water.
Lou warns:
As a society, we do not plan well for economic transitions; nor do we tend to plan for the long term. Our elected officials have a vested interest in helping businesses and industries that are here now, not imagining future businesses and industries. Coal companies focus only on this year’s profits. Unions protect current members’ jobs. Planning the future of Boone County is too important to leave up to the president of the West Virginia Coal Association, the CEO of Alpha Natural Resources, the president of the United Mine Workers, or even government officials like Sen. Manchin and Gov. Tomblin.
This time, the people need to plan out their own future. What do we want the future economy to look like? I propose that we try to create a society that will last for another 100 years, 200 years, or maybe even 1,000 years. But under the current plan, Boone County will face utter devastation –economic and environmental — in just 25 years.
For those who don’t know him, Lou Martin has written extensively about the working-class people of Appalachia, with a focus on the steel and pottery country of West Virginia’s Northern Panhandle (see here, for example). And, he’s observed what has happened in those parts of the world in recent years, writing in his West Virginia University doctoral dissertation:
Beginning in the 1960s, local potteries began closing up shop until only Homer Laughlin remained. When Weirton Steel showcased its “mill of the future” in 1967, that moment proved to be the high point for the company and its workers. Thereafter, foreign competition, mismanagement, and global economic forces beyond any individual company’s control undercut Weirton Steel’s position in the market. By the 1980s, working families in Hancock County were faced with many tough decisions and sad realities as the winds of “creative destruction,” in the words of economists, picked up thousands of industrial jobs and carried them to the distant frontiers of industrial capitalism. The county’s population declined from about 40,000 in 1980 to about 30,000 in 2000. Many of those who remain are retirees who have watched helplessly as pensions and health insurance evaporated amidst bankruptcy hearings and corporate takeovers.
The deindustrialization of Hancock County underscores the ongoing nature of the industrial restructuring that brought new industries and industrial jobs to the county a century before. Workers struggled for decades to achieve a modest, dependable income and a decent life. During those decades, they continually adapted to new technologies, shifting markets, and changes within the working class. At the height of their influence locally, the rural-industrial workers of Hancock County also joined with like-minded Americans around the country to roll back the New Deal order and transform postwar America. The wrenching economic changes of the last quarter of the twentieth century, however, have left many working families to wonder what it was all about.
Dave Thearle, a member of the United Mine Workers of America, waves an American Flag during a labor rally in Waynesburg, Pa., Friday, April 1, 2011. (AP Photo/Keith Srakocic)
As I read, I was reminded of passages from the speech AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka gave on Friday at the United Nations:
Now, some people’s response is to demand that we end all coal production now—they say “End Coal.” Never mind that such a thing is simply not going to happen—there is no substitute now for metallurgical coal and if we stopped burning coal this afternoon and cut the power in the U.S. grid by 50 percent, as Mayor Bloomberg advocates, he’d be reading handwritten memos by candlelight this evening. Given that reality, it’s important to think about how that slogan is heard in places like my hometown of Nemacolin, Pennsylvania.
Nemacolin lives on coal—the coal mine my grandfather and my father went down to every day of their working lives, the power plant the mine feeds, the rail lines that carry coal to other plants. When these folks hear “End Coal,” it sounds like a threat to destroy the value of our homes, to shut our schools and churches, to drive us away from the place our parents and grandparents are buried, to take away the work that for more than a hundred years has made us who we are.
So why, in an economy without an effective safety net, would the good men and women of my hometown and a thousand places like it surrender their whole lives and sit by while others try to force them to bear the cost of change.
The truth is that in many places – and not just places where coal is mined – there is fear that the “green economy” will turn into another version of the radical inequality that now haunts our society—another economy that works for the 1% and not for the 99%.
You can read the speech for yourself here and you can also see the initial reactions from a couple of the most outspoken anti-mountaintop removal activists in the comments section.
It’s certainly true that Rich Trumka didn’t mention mountaintop removal — and there’s no doubt we haven’t heard much from the Rich’s old friends at the United Mine Workers about the growing body of science that links living near mountaintop removal to serious health problems, to increases risks of cancer and birth defects among coalfield children. I’ve asked the question on Coal Tattoo before, “Exactly what sort of environmental protection does the UMWA support?” At the same time, I’m not sure that the way to build strong coalitions is to do what citizen groups did a few years back when the UMWA’s media spokesman, Phil Smith, took part in a roundtable aimed at trying to find common ground on heated and complicated coal industry issues.
And gosh, to hear the president of the AFL-CIO to speak so eloquently about what is without a doubt a much larger global crisis — climate change — was a truly remarkable moment. Just go back and read part of it:
Today, as we meet together, scientists tell us we are headed ever more swiftly toward irreversible climate change—with catastrophic consequences for human civilization. We must have a stable climate to feed the planet, to ensure there is drinking water for our cities but not floodwaters at our doors. A stable climate is the foundation of our global civilization, of our global economy—the prerequisite for a profitable investment environment.
And to those who say climate risk is a far off problem, I can tell you that I have hunted the same woods in Western Pennsylvania my entire life and climate change is happening now—I see it in the summer droughts that kill the trees, the warm winter nights when flowers bloom in January, the snows that fall less frequently and melt more quickly.
And what about economic transformation, about green jobs and a stronger economy? Rich Trumka said:
Even so, some will ask, why should investors or working people focus on climate risk when we have so many economic problems across the world? The labor movement has a clear answer: Addressing climate risk is not a distraction from solving our economic problems. My friends, addressing climate risk means retooling our world—it means that every factory and power plant, every home and office, every rail line and highway, every vehicle, locomotive and plane, every school and hospital, must be modernized, upgraded, renovated or replaced with something cleaner, more efficient, less wasteful.
Taking on the threat of climate change means putting investment capital to work creating jobs. It means building a road to a healthier world and a healthier world economy–one less dependent on volatile energy prices, one where many more of us have the things that modern energy makes possible.
Reading the Trumka speech and the reactions to it also reminded me of the wise words of the late Sen. Robert C. Byrd:
Change is no stranger to the coal industry. Think of the huge changes which came with the onset of the Machine Age in the late 1800’s. Mechanization has increased coal production and revenues, but also has eliminated jobs, hurting the economies of coal communities. In 1979, there were 62,500 coal miners in the Mountain State. Today there are about 22,000. In recent years, West Virginia has seen record high coal production and record low coal employment.
And change is undeniably upon the coal industry again. The increased use of mountaintop removal mining means that fewer miners are needed to meet company production goals. Meanwhile the Central Appalachian coal seams that remain to be mined are becoming thinner and more costly to mine. Mountaintop removal mining, a declining national demand for energy, rising mining costs and erratic spot market prices all add up to fewer jobs in the coal fields.
These are real problems. They affect real people. And West Virginia’s elected officials are rightly concerned about jobs and the economic impact on local communities. I share those concerns.
Remember that Sen. Byrd also told us that “the time has come to have an open and honest dialogue about coal’s future in West Virginia.” Of course, that is exactly the oppose of what we heard last week from Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin, in a State of the State address that mentioned coal only to cheer-lead, as opposed to actually leading. And it’s exactly the opposite of what other political leaders are doing when they dodge questions about the mountaintop removal health studies.
Even for those political leaders who support mountaintop removal — or who are afraid not to support it — go back and read Lou Martin’s op-ed piece:
… Even if we cannot agree on mountaintop removal, change is still coming. A 2010 report by Downstream Strategies predicts that coal mining in Central Appalachia will decline by more than half over the next 25 years (from 234 million tons in 2008, down to 99 million tons in 2035) for reasons ranging from competition from natural gas to depletion of the most productive reserves.
There’s a crisis in the making … what are we going to do about it?
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The silence from both sides is deafening. UMWA,,, hello Cecil!!??? Are you out there? Hello Big Greens!!!?? Where are you??
Bo,
Please go easy on the taunting and repeated question marks, exclamation marks … that doesn’t do much to encourage anyone to use the comments section of this blog for an honest dialogue.
In my previous post last week, you commented:
“A dialogue we need, yes, but first, as long as mountaintop removal exists and politicians and the coal industry refuse to acknowledge the ever growing science that mtr is a health hazard and call for its end, there cannot be honest dialogue. We must address the question; are we going to allow people to be poisoned by MTR while we sit down and talk about a just transition?”
What I read there is: Agree with us on our major issue, take our side on it, and then — and only then — can we talk.
I’m not sure that’s what you mean, but that’s the way it sounds.
You prefaced your comments by saying you were writing as a a human rights activist, not an environmentalist.
I’ve written more stories and blog posts than any other media outlet about the WVU health studies — No reasonable person would question whether, as a journalist, I view them as terribly importance science the public needs to understand.
But I also wonder if reasonable people would understand that portraying the actions of others as human rights violations is not the best way to get those others to the table talking.
Citizen activists who oppose mountaintop removal can campaign to end that practice. But if their campaign is built on that level of rhetoric, it’s not really any wonder that someone like Cecil Roberts isn’t exactly beating down the door to talk or to join you, is it?
None of that is to say that the studies coming out of WVU aren’t incredibly important, worthy of more study — and of far more consideration by policymakers than the silence they’re getting.
Ken.
Ken, your response to Bo above is probably the best and most intelligent piece you have ever written.
Yogi,
I don’t know how intelligent it was … given that I’m sure the comments telling me I’m full of it are being written right now.
Something that is worth adding is that it’s also easy to understand how maddening it is for someone like Bo — whose life is constantly and literally affected by mountaintop removal, and someone who has spent an incredible amount of time seeking out the expertise of someone like Dr. Michael Hendryx to study what he sees happening in his community, only to have political leaders do their best to make sure the findings aren’t part of the broader public discussion in the region and nationally.
And, as someone who is far from an expert on the terminology of the human rights community, it’s also educational for me to read Universal Declaration on Human Rights (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_Declaration_of_Human_Rights ), and see the sorts of things that clearly aren’t in existence even in the United States, such as:
“… Higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit…”
“Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.”
“No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.”
Probably, most people when they see the phrase “human rights” think of the context within which the term and these sorts of declarations began — the atrocities of the Holocaust, war crimes, etc. — The notion that these are the sorts of things most people think of when the phrase is used is what drove my response to Bo. But the real definitions drawn up by our society’s leaders are much broader than that, and worth considering in far more contexts than covered by this blog on coal mining.
Ken.
As we’ve noted before, creating a permanent mineral tax trust fund (similar to Wyoming, New Mexico, and Montana) with an increase in the severance tax would be one way to help transition the state toward more sustainable growth. If the interest income from the permanent fund is used to diversify the economy (by investing in infrastructure, transition assistance, education, R&D, early childhood and community development, etc.) it could help reshape our future and ensure that we replace non- renewable natural resources, which are depleted over time, with a permanent supply of money that grows ever larger. Given our weak fiscal capacity (low incomes and high needs) and colonial ownership of assets, this might be our only way to fund such a project.
Unfortunately, we humans remain really bad at foresight. The failure of levees in New Orleans was predicted decades before it happened. Whether you are pro-, anti- or indifferent, coal is a finite resource. When it runs out or loses cost competitiveness in the market, West Virginia is going to have major problems. In the meantime, coal jobs will continue to decline as advances in extraction technology increase efficiency. The writing is on the wall. So what are we going to do to replace these lost jobs and tax revenues?
Ken,
Great piece. I’m curious about the lead image, however there is for the second. There’s no caption or photographer attribution. Can you share that information? Thanks!
Bo is witnessing the destruction of his home and the death of his neighbors by a practice that is not even legal under US law much less international law. That’s a fact, no matter what the legal systems in West Virginia or in Washington say. Dr. Hyndryx’s studies back this up, because how is it legal to kill people in their own communities? Bo is also right about the Big Greens, who spend much time and effort trying to hide their total ineffectiveness on dealing with climate change. Bo might make some people uncomfortable but no one can refute what he is saying. And gosh Ken, if you’d just come down here and spend sometime you might understand. This is a crime scene and few households here have been untouched by this and the body count is rising. If we can’t stop mountain top removal what hope do we have of dealing with climate change? When will people outside of the coalfields start paying attention? We are running out of time.
This seemingly simple and direct piece, including the above comments, is one of the most moving and important journalistic pieces I have seen in a WV newspaper in a long time.
It is moving to see this honest revelations spoken by Mr. Trumka and of course Senator Byrd’s acknowledgements.
What can we do to bring this important and honest conversation about our complex relationship with coal and climate change challenges to our West Virginia communities?
Ken, I greatly appreciate Richard Trumpka’s remarks. My remarks are not intended to be sarcastic nor divisive. They are meant to be exactly what they are; truth. If we continue to coddle words and worry about hurt feelings we will never end mountaintop removal, never. Going along with the status quo is exactly what got us in this mess. We can no longer afford to be complacent, kun by ya in our efforts. No one is going to end mtr for us, not Trumka, and certainly not Cecil Roberts without a clear message of truth from our side. Truth is, people in mtr communities are experiencing great negative health compared to people living in non mtr communities. How can any caring reasonable person in good conscious begin to talk about a just transition requiring decades to complete, knowing that people are dying in mtr communities. Let’s not forget, full blown mtr has only been around for approximately 15-20 years and the health data that is being gathered in mtr communities is highly alarming. It’s going to be off the charts in another 15 years. History will record those that opposed its end, those that supported its continuance, and those that passively buried their head in the sand.
Copied below are a few of the Articles of Human Rights that I base my position of human rights upon. Without actually living in an mtr community and witnessing the violations of these articles on a daily basis for a number of years I can certainly understand how you and others would find difficulty in accepting the fact that these violations exists in the United States. But they do; they exist is mtr communities. If you want to pick at them; let’s pick.
Article 1
All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 3
Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person
Article 4
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 7
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 20
(1) Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association. (2) No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Mike,
Thanks as always for your comment and your contributions to our discussions of these issues.
Ken.
Bo,
Thanks also for your comment and your thoughtful response.
Your previous comment, and the frequent references by Bob Kincaid to “human rights” in the context of mountaintop removal prompted me to read that U.N. document, something I had not read before. It was quite moving and educational, and for that, I thank you and Bob.
You’re right that I don’t live in your community and put up with what you put up with. As many readers have pointed out, I’m also not a coal miner — so I don’t write first-hand about that experience, whether working in dangerous conditions underground or at a surface mine.
If to tell a story as a reporter one has to actually live that story and literally walk in the person’s shoes, we’re going to eliminate quite a few journalists from a profession that is already far too short on people able to make a living doing what I think is pretty important work.
Whether Mike Roselle agrees or not, I’ve certainly tried my best to tell the truth in my stories — and certainly on this blog — about what I’ve seen, from visits to coalfield communities, conversations with miners’ widows, and every other type of reporting I could think of going back a few years now. My work is far from perfect, though, and I need all of the help I can get to improve.
What I was trying to get at here is that activists like Bo are entitled to use whatever language they want to describe what they face in their lives.
My only point was that, if you tell Cecil Roberts that his members working at surface mines are violating someone’s human rights, he might be less willing to sit down and discuss it with you than if you if you approach him a little differently. Your goal can be to use the strongest language possible to describe something, believing that it’s such a terrible injustice that it might be stopped — but in doing that, you’ve got to acknowledge that your strategy is no longer to try to sit down with “the other side,” for lack of a better term.
My response to Bo was really more about trying to continue to make Coal Tattoo’s comments section a place for at least somewhat polite, intelligent and reasoned discussion on these issues — as opposed to one of those places, all too common on the Internet, where people taunt and call names and verbally attack and vilify those they disagree with about a political issue. My notion, right or wrong (and plenty of people on both sides think it’s wrong) is that human beings who start off disagreeing almost violently about something can, if they can calm down and listen to each other, find plenty of common ground on the toughest of issues.
Of course, if mountaintop removal is a “human rights violation” or a collection of them, then no right-thinking person can possibly support it, correct? Over the years, we’ve seen all manner of comparisons between mountaintop removal and atrocities committed through history around the world.
That’s the stumbling block I hit when I read those posts from Bo and Bob. Mountaintop removal is not the holocaust, folks. Saying that costs credibility. Using the phrase “human rights” in the context of mountaintop removal creates that sort of image, and thus I stumble when I read it.
On the other hand, Bo illustrates a number of items from the U.N. statement on human rights that he argues compellingly fit with what’s going on on the coalfields. Then, though, he throws in this one:
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”
Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property to be bought and sold, and are forced to work.
I could be wrong, but it seems to me that only with a huge, huge amount of poetic license can anyone make the case that is going on here.
I had walked away from this discussion with the notion that my stumbling over the use of the term “human rights” in the context of mountaintop removal was perhaps my own fault, based on my own limited understanding of the phrase — and based on my belief that most people, when they see the term, think of something so horrible that even mountaintop removal can’t compare. But then I see Bo comparing it to slavery — and there are more slaves today in the world than at any point in history, by the way (http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1952335,00.html ) — and now, I’m not so sure.
Ken.
A more basic question for this discussion is which right is more important; the right to a clean environment to enjoy one’s property or the right to develop one’s property as one sees fit? Unfortunately, the one with the deeper pockets usually wins these arguments.
All to often, most often actually, those of us opposing mtr are seen as, and referred to as, “emnvironmentalist”. As my good friend Larry Gibson has always said, “everyone is an environmentalist”. But the reason to end mtr is not for the bats and the birds, nor the frogs and the lizards, or for hugging a tree. The reason is because it threatens the lives of real people who should be afforded the same protection under the law as anyone else in America. It feels to me that we have been abandoned of that protection.
I do understand the jobs issue, just as as much as Cecil Roberts. I realize people need to work and the union has a duty to protect their members jobs. We have addressed the jobs issue numerous times only to be rejected by the UMWA and others in addressing the mtr issue. I would be happy to sit down with Cecil or anyone on the coal side and have a clear discusssion on every element of the mtr issue, but there has to be a willing partner. Joe Manchin often talks about “balance”, it must sound good to him because he keeps saying it over and over. But in order to have real balance we must have truth.
And I stand behind this position:
“No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.”
The key words are servitude and slavery in all forms.
When an industry wields its power over a state government to the extent that it controls a legislative body to promote and defend its will over the health and well being of The People, servitude is possible. And clearly, if workers and community members related to workers are required to rest their first amendment right of free speech or be denied a job, or be fired from their job, servitude has been created, and exists.
Bo,
Thanks for the continued discussion.
You started your latest comment by writing:
“All to often, most often actually, those of us opposing mtr are seen as, and referred to as, “emnvironmentalist”. ”
Specifically what in this discussion are you talking about? I tried to take great care not to characterize you that way … So I’m not clear what you’re referring to.
Ken.
Ken, I simply wanted to make the point that if I am to be labeled I would prefer to be labled as a human rights advocate rather than an “environmentalist”. You seem to take issue with that stand. I want to make clear my reason to end mtr is not about the destruction of the mountains and its wild life but for the reason of human life.
Contrary to what some may be thinking I am not in favor of bashing my way through to the end of mtr. We need dialogue, true dialogue and acceptance of the truth from both sides. Once we establish that willingness to listen to each other we may be able to work our way into moving forward in an amicable approach for the benefit for all. As I have said many times, I am not opposed to coal mining, I understand its importance. I extend my handshake in good faith to Cecil Roberts and Richard Trumpka right here and now; let’s talk.
Bo,
But where did I — or anyone else in this thread — label you an environmentalist? I don’t think anyone did.
Ken.
No one did. I’m not saying you did. You seem to have taken exception to my comment that I am writing as a human rights activists not as an environmentalists, thats all. My point is that we (meaning those of us opposing mtr) are always seen as environmentalists, (remember the CNN piece with Blair Mtn) and I want to make it clear that this issue is much more than simply about the environment.
We need to establish the fact that mtr is adversly affecting the health of human beings. When the masses hear about an mtr protests or event they automatically think it is a bunch of environmentalists defending a mayfly over someones job. The coal industry advocates have often portrayed it that way. Joe Manchin even referred to our side as “extreme environmentalists” If we allow that label to continue we are hurting our chances of any meaningful dialogue.
Bo,
Thanks for that clarification … Of course, I don’t take the blame for what CNN or any other media outlet does …
I’ll just point out that, while your friend Mike Roselle takes shots at me, Coal Tattoo and the newspaper where I work are the only West Virginia media outlets that have provided any detailed coverage of the WVU health studies and what they have to say about what mountaintop removal is doing to communities like yours.
There’s room for discussion about whether the use of the “human rights” characterization is appropriate — whether it unfairly creates in people’s minds a comparison to atrocities that are far, far worse (the holocaust) — the argument that the human health problems are ignored by the media ought to be taken up with the media who are ignoring it.
Ken.
In my simple mind this “human rights” issue comes down to a offender vs offendee (to coin a word.) Can mtr be conducted in a manner that doesn’t offend the environment or human health? The answer to this question is obvious to me. It’s analogous to smoking in public places – I know this will raise some KY/WV ire. One cannot smoke in my presence without offending my senses, my nose, and eyes, and my health. If you want to smoke you can go in a smoking booth somewhere that removes the allergens and toxins from the my atmosphere. The smoker does not have a right to contaminate my atmosphere. GOOD science has shown mtr to be offensive to nature, to wild animals, to forests, to water and streams, to unborn babies, to humans who hope to live life cancer free, etc. Our leaders have chosen to take the side of the offenders in this this case. They have chosen perceived monetary gains over what is right for the people involved.
Ken, thank you for providing the forum for these conversations. I wanted to relay a story regarding this question of human rights if I may that I thought you and readers may find of interest…In 2007, I was invited to make a presentation at the New York offices of Human Rights Watch about mountaintop removal. About nineteen staffers gathered around a conference table as I projected images of the land and people so ravaged by mountaintop removal coal operations in their backyards. I also read from my reporters notebooks, quotes from West Virginians testifying to the atrocities associated with mountaintop removal coal mining – workers like Jackie Browning who got horribly sick from working at the Goals Coal Prep Plant next to Marsh Fork Elementary. Browning went to a specialized hospital for months at a time on two separate occasions where doctors referred to his ails as akin to those of a soldier of war exposed to chemical weapons like agent orange, mustard gas, et al. Browning, and others, suffered horribly; their sickness caused by breathing the chemicals used on the coal before it goes to market. I told the Human Rights WAtch staff about the communities of Rt 49 in Mingo County: RAwl, Merrimack, Sprigg and Lick CReek – the brown, smelly water from their taps – and their numerous illnesses and deaths. When I finished the hour-long presentation, I asked the assembled group, is this a human rights issue? Are these abuses of human rights? There was unanimous agreement amongst those gathered.
The ironic part of it all is that the US-arm of Human Rights WAtch does not really have a channel to address this issue – it does not neatly fit into their mandate so to speak.
Who will address the human rights atrocities in Appalachia at the hands of the coal industry, where the air and water have been polluted enough to make the health of those who live near these operations sick ?
Ken,
First off, this of course is not a crisis in the making, its a full blown human health catastrophe, especially if you live here. Now sitting down with the opposition is always a god idea, but only if both sides bring something to the table. What have the industry or unions ever brought to the table? And then when they leave the table they label us radical environmentalists. Now I can live with that label but Bo cannot. If it makes it harder to get to the table to be for human health that protecting the birds, then something is already wrong. There are two ways to look at this and you seem to believe this is largely about economics, legal issues and even out system of democracy. For us, its about much more. Lincoln did not bother arguing with the economics of slavery or what the legal system thought of it. It was wrong. Now that seems obvious, but back then many chose argue the economics of human bondage rather than the morality of it. Human rights issues, are at their very core, moral issues. Mountain top removal is no different. Don’t you believe that even reporters must take sides on a moral issue.
Part of the problem that atrocities cause is that they leave a lingering image which all other abuses may be seen to be measured by in order to qualify. The imagery of history creates a false sense that certain things have to be done certain ways in order to fall under a given rubric. The reality is far different. Human rights abuses need not be attended by a sociopolitical philosophy that is easily condemned as odious. Sometimes they are attended by things of which we generally approve, like the pursuit of wealth and profit.
Let me make a suggestion here: the measure of human rights is not the agonizing imagery of past horrors, but the brutal reality of present suffering, especially when that suffering comes from nothing more than the desire of a relatively small group of people to have more wealth, with no available established benchmark to evaluate the relative benefits of the monetary profits versus the human costs. Human rights abuses become even more obvious when those who profit most from the abuse do not live within the territorial confines where the imposed sacrifices take place.
When human beings cannot attend to the basic necessities of existence without having their lives diminished and/or ended, their rights to go on being human have been violated. When a mother cannot bathe her child without knowing she is also bathing her child in a toxic stew of pernicious chemicals, both her and her child’s lives as humans have been as surely diminished and their rights to BE human have been trampled as if more heavy-handed approaches of the past had been used. Those who violate these rights cannot, MUST not receive a pass because they’ve learned to violate rights more subtly or with less notice. If we adhere to the apparent standard enunciated here of “it’s not the holocaust,” we’re done. As long as Alpha never makes the stupid mistake of doing it THST way, they’re in the clear.
I suggest a more intellectually and humanely honest approach: let the people being violated define the terms of their violation. Just because we don’t have piles of skulls sitting hard by the road, as folks like Antrim and Paul Corbitt Brown have documented in other parts of the world; just because we are afforded the time to bury our dead (which inures to the benefit of those helping along the killing, thus proving they’re getting smarter about it), it does not follow that there is no human rights crisis in Appalachia.
Mike Roselle,
I’ll answer your question, which was:
“Don’t you believe that even reporters must take sides on a moral issue.”
I believe that the job of a journalist is to try, as best they can, to tell the truth — to shin light into dark places, as Antrim and Paul Corbitt Brown have done in dark places, telling stories that I find unimaginable. Does that constitute taking sides? In my experience, most subjects of stories think telling the truth amounts to taking sides — we in America are so used to the cold version of journalism that amounts to bracketing the truth. On the other hand, my experience with Coal Tattoo has taught me that folks who depict themselves as being on the side of the angels have pretty thin skins, and think any journalist who dares point out the inaccuracy in something they say is a traitor or a sellout.
Bob Kincaid makes some very good points above. Certainly, the test for whether something is right or wrong isn’t whether it’s the holocaust. But I also find it hard to believe that anyone would believe that comparing mountaintop removal to the holocaust, or genocide, or slavery, isn’t somehow cheapening those things — words matter, even if we humans often have mouths (or fingers) that move faster than our brains.
As someone who writes not just for the coal-obsessed audience of this blog, I will continue to struggle with what terms are appropriate in describing these and many other things. To say otherwise to avoid getting attacked by Mike Roselle would be dishonest.
At the same time, while public opinion polls clearly show most West Virginians, indeed most Americans, oppose mountaintop removal, I’m not sure we see the constant outcry about it from average, everyday citizens that it will take to get the attention of mainstream political leaders. Folks are are leading the fight against mountaintop removal might want to consider whether comparing to the holocaust or calling it genocide (as some have done) is a strategy that leads folks who might otherwise be on your side to think you’re overstating your case. So while Bob Kincaid is right when he suggests the bar for outrage is not so as as to require a holocaust to get our attention, my view is that he’s wrong if he refuses to recognize that words matter insofar as they create images from which the general public will judge your arguments. Those who are being violated might rightly get to define the terms of their violation — but if they do so in a way that makes the broader population tune them out, then what good have they done for themselves or their cause?
Perhaps it’s foolish to try to defend myself and my newspaper (and blog) in the face of a movement that makes much of its argument by complaining that the media gets it wrong or ignores the story — but the Gazette’s been covering mountaintop removal longer than some of the folks commenting here have been familiar with the practice. I’ve written about it since 1997, and Paul Nyden covered it with some regularity before then, dating back to the 1980s.
I’m not saying our coverage has been perfect. We’re constrained by, among other things, my own limited story-telling abilities, a broader community that has many competing issues with their own victims that also require strong reporting from us, and an economy that has left our newsroom significantly smaller than when I started here more than 20 years ago.
And not for nothing, but show me one other mainstream media outlet in this region (or outside of it, for that matter) — the “for profit media” that Bob Kincaid likes to attack or dismiss — that not allow allows this sort of discussion, but assigns one of its most senior staffers to actively take part in.
Thanks all for the continued discussion … Ken.
Roger May,
My apologies for not responding earlier to your query … here’s the caption for that photograph:
“A coal truck drives out of downtown Welch, W.Va., Wednesday, Feb. 9, 2011. Coal brought a large population to the McDowell County in the 1940′s. Now the population is shrinking and the county suffers from unemployment and poverty. Now, here as in one-fourth of all U.S. counties, West Virginia’s graying residents are slowly dying off. Hit by an aging population and a poor economy, a near-record level of U.S. counties is experiencing more deaths than births in their communities, a phenomenon demographers call “natural decrease.” (AP Photo/Jon C. Hancock)”
Ken.
Thanks, indeed, for the dialogue, Ken. I have to say I don’t think you know what I’m pointing out in my reference to “ForProfit Media,” but that’s not salient to the instant conversation, and I’ll leave it at that.
I also find myself at sixes and sevens over this issue of how we refer to the fact that people are being poisoned for money. The deliberately indifferent pursuit of profit at the expense of the lives of innocents is factual. Also factual is the reality that others will decide what to call the people who are poisoned. Some of us, however, reject such external labeling, regardless of whether our hides are alligator-tough or tissue paper-thin.
Finally, I also want to address the question of your original post, and I suspect it’s the same semi-cynical answer you might give, or perhaps intended in asking it. “What will we do?” Probably nothing. The coal industry doesn’t see a problem in beggaring an entire region and blowing out of town when the money (read: “coal”) is all gone. If the coal industry doesn’t see the problem, then neither do its cheerleaders (a term you have used previously) like Governor Tomblin. If neither the coal industry nor it’s captive politicians see a problem, then the problem doesn’t exist
Sorry for the back-to-back posts, Ken, but my fingers are too big for these tiny virtual buttons, and “Submit” is far too easy to hit inadvertently.
To complete my thought:
Those of us who DO see a problem are largely minimized and marginalized. When the coal industry and it’s devotees constantly harped at those of us struggling to save lives and futures, asking “But what about the jobs,” Coal River Mountain Watch, at no small expense, undertook to show that it is, in fact, possible to begin building a sustainable, renewable, non-coal economy in the heart of the area where the externalized sacrifices are being imposed. For our efforts, the coal industry responded by cavalierly dismissing any idea of either the viability or even the importance of wind power, claiming that without coal, we’ll all, to use their own words, “freeze to death in the dark.”
It left me, at least, with the impression that the coal industry, itself, is the entity that will be most responsible when Appalachians are left to survive in the wake of what is becoming a more likely and more imminent abandonment. If anyone “freezes to death in the dark,” it will be because people of vision and goodwill were ignored or derided while the coal industry and it’s politicians continued in the same tired, age-old process of mutual back-slapping and -scratching.
Ultimately, there may be one more question: when the coal industry bids Appalachia a hasty “Sayonara,” who’s going to feed the politicians who have supped so grandly at coal’s table?
Scrutinizing the words we use to describe what we feel mountaintop removal is doing to our communities makes for a lively discussion I suppose, but in the end we are left with nothing more than a conversation.
I am very sure Sen. Manchin, Gov. Tomblin, Cecil Roberts and others, including the coal industry monitor Ken’s blog. They are all well aware that the fallout from mountaintop removal is harming people. It is time they addressed this growing crisis. Supporting a coal industry that has helped you get elected, an industry that has created a major tax base for your state, is all logical and a bit expected. But, to sit mum, when in the face of growing evidence that a specific mining method is causing great harm to the people in nearby communities is unacceptable. There is a fine line between supporting an industry and crossing the line to supporting this immoral act on people living in mountaintop removal communities. The point I want to make is this; you can’t hide behind ignorance and legal jargon forever. Somewhere along the path of this health crisis someone or some one’s are going to be held accountable. The people have called on their representatives for help. The alarms were rang long ago and now supported by scientific research. It is time to act. Do we have a leader that will address the growing scientific evidence that mountaintop removal is causing great health harm to our people? That is a question I would love to see you post Ken.
Bo,
You wrote:
“Do we have a leader that will address the growing scientific evidence that mountaintop removal is causing great health harm to our people? That is a question I would love to see you post Ken.”
I know you read Coal Tattoo at least once in a while, Bo … gosh, I’m not sure how many other ways I can ask it … and in fact, I’m the only reporter that’s doing it — but to hear your friend Mike Roselle talk, I don’t know a darned thing about mountaintop removal.
In any event, this conversation has about run its course — so I think we’ll close the comments section on this one. Thanks everyone. Ken.