Beware of politicians conflating the best interests of Big Coal with the best interests of coal miners. Friends of the formers are almost always enemies of the latter.
Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Mioney:
Who are the real friends of coal miners? Like in the timber wars of
the 1980s, an exploitative industry and its lackey politicians have
claimed that the industry looks out for the miners against those evil
environmentalists, while at the same time engaging in land management
and labor policies that make workers’ lives worse.
Given a declining
industry due to overexploitation of the resource and because of a lack
of economic alternatives for scared workers, this political move has
been very effective both in logging towns of the Northwest and
Appalachian coal country.
But in both places, activists have pushed back against the false choices of industry versus environment. Here
is an outstanding letter from retired UMWA organizer Carl Shoupe about
the lies of the coal industry to the people of Kentucky.
Since I’ve been around coal all my life, I guess I should
be pleased when our “leaders” say they are Friends of Coal. But lately,
I’ve been wondering, which part of coal they’re friends with.
Peabody Energy and its new company, Patriot Coal, are trying to
weasel out of paying health and pension benefits promised to thousands
of retired UMWA miners. Have you heard any objection from these Friends
of Coal in our marble palaces in Frankfort? Those miners earned their
benefits with their sweat and their blood, but now Peabody wants to dump
them like they’re just more overburden.
These politicians may be friends of coal, but they’re not friends of
coal miners and their families. These miners and their families are
being robbed of their retirement and benefits.
My friend Truman recently spent a week hooked up to a hospital
ventilator. Like thousands of others, he suffers with black lung, caused
by working in underground mines filled with coal dust. Today, the
number of severe black lung cases is on the rise again, affecting
workers on strip mines and below ground. And yet Congressman Hal Rogers
has led efforts in Congress to block rules designed to protect miners
from that awful disease.
Another friend of mine had to move with his daughter away from the
homeplace where his family has lived for over 200 years. Toxic runoff
from mountaintop removal was poisoning him and his family.
But his state representative, House Speaker Greg Stumbo, stood up at
an Environmental Protection Agency hearing about water pollution and
insisted that anyone who wants to save the mountains should just “go buy
one.”
The speaker may be a friend of the coal companies, but he’s no friend
of coalfield families threatened by mountaintop mining and poisoned
water.
Coal companies and politicians of both parties who are beholden to
coal money are not the friends of workers. At the very least, political
progressives should be aware that environmentalists are not the enemies
of coal miners. The enemy is the employer who has zero concern for the
aftermath of coal mining and the long-term effects of coal dependency on
Appalachia.
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