The New Tragedy of Coal Country

[mia]

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“I think we ought to forever celebrate today,” Chris Hamilton, senior vice president of the West Virginia Coal Association, told the crowd, which also included the state attorney general and lieutenant governor. “Today signifies officially the end of the war on coal. I think we should always celebrate November 28.”

Tuesday was the day the Environmental Protection Agency came to West Virginia. The agency’s industry-friendly administrator, Scott Pruitt, had agreed to hold exactly one public hearing on his plan to repeal the Clean Power Plan—President Barack Obama’s signature climate change regulation—and he wanted to do it in coal country. Earlier that morning, coal executives, lobbyists, and top state Republicans told EPA officials that the CPP would destroy the coal industry—and that repealing it would bring coal jobs back. “We have always known coal has been the backbone of the economy of the state. And it always will be,” Tim Armstead, the speaker of the West Virginia House of Delegates, told the coal miners. “Those who say it will not simply are not grasping reality.”

There’s good reason to believe the Trump administration will follow through with its plan to repeal the CPP, which would require the American power sector to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 32 percent from 2005 levels by the year 2030. (The plan was stayed by the Supreme Court in 2016.) The EPA’s two-day public hearing was a farce. The agency split Tuesday’s hearing into three rooms far apart from each other on sprawling state capitol complex, and assigned all the major anti-regulation speakers to one room. That was the room the miners attended—possibly at the request of their boss, Murray Energy CEO Robert Murray—and it was the only room that the EPA live-streamed online. Environmental advocates, representatives from local interest groups, and regular citizens who signed up to speak were assigned to the other rooms. The agency doesn’t have any more public hearings scheduled.

Those who make money and gain power from coal’s dominance know that no amount of deregulation can arrest coal’s inevitable decline. But when they’re face-to-face with West Virginians, like this week in Charleston, they elide that reality and claim that coal will never die, and indeed will grow. That’s what families that have depended on coal for generations want to hear. “I’m tired of being blamed for hurricanes,” said miner Rick Wilson, a barbed-wire tattoo encircling his left forearm. “I’m tired of being called a murderer.” No one should demonize the workers whose toil has powered America’s growth for so long, but they also need to hear the harsh truth from the people they trust most: Trump can’t bring coal back, and misery awaits those who cling to this myth.

https://newrepublic.com/article/146015/new-tragedy-coal-country

[HughBeaumont]

1. Geeeeeeez, so much dumb in one photo.

Every single one of these shits owes America an apology.

Stop tethering yourselves to myth, bite some bitter pills and CHANGE already. Time has marched on and they refuse to.

[Botany]

2. Electric power companies have spent billions switching their plants from coal to gas ...

... and they are not going back.

Gas is cheaper
Gas is cleaner
Gas is much easier to use
Gas does not produce tons of waste products and degrade the equipment

BTW I was just in W.V. and coal people are still buying the bullcrap that coal
is coming back.

[Historic NY]

3. Conned by the con....

wait until they lose welfare, might be the breaking point.

[kentuck]

4. The War on Coal is over and the War on Christmas begins!

Gullibility.

[LeftinOH]

5. "..families who have depended on coal for generations.."

Please. I wonder what all those people whose families depended (for generations) on whaling, lamp-lighting, passenger-pigeon processing, hat making, etc. ever managed to cope with changing technology?

[Xolodno]

6. At the rate this is going....

...this will go the way of "Tenant Farming". All the sudden there are no jobs. Plenty of warning signs that it was coming but will be ignored and dismissed as "its just temporary slowdown" or "its just a minor drop, it will take decade if not a century before coal is no longer needed".

Nope, it will one day hit and it will hit hard. That day will be when coal companies sit down at the table to negotiate prices and the power utility companies don't show up.

The coal miners best hope they are not in the midst of a large recession at the same time.

[spanone]

7. this criminal administration will kill these people as they cheer them on....

[Dulcinea]

8. Here's the real tragedy:

A lot of coal mining today is done by robots, just like a lot of other industries. Coal companies and public officials who deny this or gloss it over are complicit. They'll still make money, at least for a while, but the miners are the ones who'll be left out in the cold.

[gratuitous]

9. As long as the people of West Virginia are willing to be poisoned and murdered

Coal will be the backbone of the state's economy. When those people finally decide they've suffered enough - and who knows when that will be - coal will utterly collapse. It may collapse before that day, but that will only happen because the robber barons can no longer squeeze blood from a stone.