Fossil Fuel Extraction: No Such Thing As an Accident

The reason it's so important that federal agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration and the National Labor Relations Board need large numbers of inspectors and police-level enforcement powers is that without them, the fossil fuel extraction industry will kill too many employees.

Because it's cheaper than making the work safe.

Eleven men died when the Deepwater Horizon exploded not because of an "accident," but because worker deaths are a necessary cost of doing business for oil companies.

Twenty-five men died in the Massey coal mine not because of an "accident," but because worker deaths are a necessary cost of doing business for coal companies.

This is just the latest example:

A coal miner killed in Kentucky this week was engaged in the dangerous practice of retreat mining that involves deliberately cutting away pillars of coal intended to support overhead rock layers.

Statistics compiled by the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration and the National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health show more than 50 miners have been killed in retreat mining operations over the past 25 years. Of those, 20 have died since 2000, including Jimmy Carmack, a miner from Barbourville who was killed Wednesday.

SNIP

Retreat mining has been going on for generations. It is legal and considered standard procedure in mines where coal reserves have nearly played out.

The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health reported last year that retreat mining historically accounts for only 10 percent of U.S. coal production and 25 percent of roof fall fatalities.

Of course it's legal. Virtually everything that kills workers in the oil, natural gas and coal industries is legal.

The problem is not what's legal; the problem is that extracting fossil fuels is irredeemably lethal. To workers; to the land, the sea and the air; to people living even far away. Always has been; always will be.

The solution is to stop extracting fossil fuels. Make that illegal.

Cross-posted at They Gave Us A Republic ....