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- Goose
- Cogito ergo sum
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- Registered: 1/29/2015
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OK, Forget About Climate for a Minute. Coal is still Awful
“Well, I ain’t collateral damage. I am somebody.”
What’s Missing In The Coal Debate
We need to end this oversight and normalization of collateral damage.
While this latest flurry of news stories, Nobel laureate commentaries and late-night “Daily Show” mockery has exposed the fallacies of the Trump administration’s union-busted coal miners pageant, the media continues to overlook a crucial part of the great coal debate:
Coal miners do not work in a vacuum.
Call it: the reckoning. Or, the true cost of living in a national sacrifice zone. And its flip side is the extraordinary resiliency of those who are defending their communities and attempting to change the narrative to ways of regenerating a mined-out community after coal.
Still cranking out 700-plus million tons of coal a year, our country has never come to grips with the fact that huge segments of our populations, namely 20-odd coal mining states from Appalachia to Alaska and in indigenous First Nations, continue to deal daily with the devastating and often deadly realities of coal mining pollution and cancer-linked toxic discharges, undrinkable and contaminated water, egregious health impacts from faulty coal slurry and coal ash impoundments, forced displacement and removal from historic communities, black lung and injury among coal miners, and an intergenerational state of trauma from living amid the ruins of an absentee outlaw industry that has rarely been held accountable for its violation-ridden operations, and placed a stranglehold on any economic diversification.
This is before we even consider the impact of mining and burning coal on our climate.
“They say we’re collateral damage,” Larry Gibson once told me on the edge of a massive strip mine in West Virginia, standing defiant as a coal miner’s son and one of the most fearless critics of mountaintop removal strip mining. “Well, I ain’t collateral damage. I am somebody.”
It’s 2017. We need to end this oversight and normalization of collateral damage in so-called coal country—in the media, in our daily conversations, and finally, in the halls of power in Washington and our state houses.
For starters: Among the scores of amazing films that have provided the historical context and ground-level realities of living in coal mining regions, check out these recent films, among so many others that I don’t have room to list:
“AFTER COAL”: Explores the successes and the failures of Welsh programs to clean up mine waste, retrain miners, and develop wind farms – comparing these efforts to similar projects planned in Appalachia.
”BLOOD ON THE MOUNTAIN”: History of coal miners and communities, and their struggle for justice, in Appalachia
”MOVING MOUNTAINS”: Coal miner’s wife stands up to the industry’s contamination of her community’s water.
”IN THE SHADOW OF COAL”: Stories from Montana’s Coal Country
”OVERBURDEN”:Mining tragedy brings together a coal miner’s sister and community advocate for change
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.
- Rongone
- Sentient Being
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- From: Keeping Calm, Sailing On
- Registered: 1/31/2015
- Posts: 2,872
Re: OK, Forget About Climate for a Minute. Coal is still Awful
Hey, here's an example how the coal mining industry can become clean, efficient, cost effective, and environmentally friendly.
Harlan County, Ky., has a coal-mining museum. It’s putting solar panels on the roof.
A coal-mining museum in the heart of coal country is turning to solar power in an effort to save money and help the surrounding community.
The Kentucky Coal Mining Museum is located in Benham, in the southeast corner of the Bluegrass State. Housed in what was originally an International Harvester commissary, the museum opened in 1994 and contains tributes to the industry for which the area is best known.
The installation of solar panels by Bluegrass Solar began this week. Tre Sexton, the owner of the company, told Yahoo News that the installation was the first step in a program to help supplement the Benham-area power grid. Sexton said the project involved multiple companies and that funding was coming from many sources, including philanthropists in the area. Excess power from the panels will be fed back into the Benham grid.
As an example of the long-term goals of the program, Sexton referred Yahoo News to the community of Berea, Ky., where more than 150 residents have been leasing power from a solar farm that opened in 2012. Although a small farm with just 246 panels, the Berea facility has helped provide a model for larger cities like Louisville as the state looks to improve its ranking of 45th among the 50 states in renewable-energy production.
The museum is owned by Southeast Kentucky Community and Technical College, and Brandon Robinson, the communications director for the college, sees the irony in the situation.
“It is a little ironic,” said Robinson in an interview with EKB-TV, “but you know, coal and solar and all the different energy sources work together hand in hand. Of course, coal is still king around here, but when you talk about using other sources to start power, it’s always good to have more than one.
“We believe that this project will help save at least $8,000 to $10,000 off the energy costs on this building alone, so it’s a very worthy effort, and it’s going to save the college money in the long run,” added Robinson in an interview with WYMT.
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