BIG COAL: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future
The disaster at the Darby Mine 1 was the natural outcome of what author Jeff Goodell has called the coal industry’s “Empire of Denial,” which covers up the true costs of coal in terms of miners lives lost, environmental destruction and contribution to global warming. This cover-up is being aided and abetted by the federal government because the coal industry is a major source of campaign contributions.
1) The only surprise in the Darby Mine 1 disaster was the time and the place.
“In 2006, 31 miners have already died, compared to 22 in all of 2005.
“Many of America’s mines are each an accident waiting to happen, the only questions are: when, where and how many will die unnecessarily. Many of these accidents happen in smaller mines in Appalachia, which are marginal until the price of coal rises enough to make them profitable. Miners call them ‘dogholes,’ and if they are working in them, the odds that you’ll be hurt or killed increase dramatically because they are much more lax in terms of safety systems in place.”
2) Coal mining is not as safe as the industry’s multi-million dollar advertising efforts want you to believe.
“According to the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, mining is still one of the most dangerous jobs in America, and working in a small underground mine is one of the few jobs that are nearly as dangerous as commercial fishing in Alaska. It is sort of like being a police officer. If you’re patrolling a shopping mall in Beverly Hills, you probably don’t have much to worry about. If you’re working on an undercover drug sting in the Bronx, you had better be ready for anything. Similarly, driving a haul truck in a big strip mine in Wyoming’s Powder River basin is no more dangerous than any other job involving heavy machinery. But if you’re cutting coal in a small, underground ‘doghole’ mine in Appalachia, the odds that you’ll be hurt or killed increase dramatically.”
2) The current administration has been making the problem worse, not better.
“In recent years, the Bush administration has sided with Big Coal over the health and safety of miners time after time after time. The Bush Administration cut the number of mine inspectors, rolled back rules on dirty power plants, and reversed Bush's campaign pledge to limit carbon dioxide emissions. Even more egregious, they have sealed the safety inspection records of mines across the country, effectively protecting the industry from scrutiny.
“Right now the Senate is holding hearings on Richard Strickler’s nomination to be the head of Mining Safety and Health Administration. Sen. Robert Byrd has serious concerns about this nomination, as Strickler has been in the industry for 30 years, and is evidence of all of the problems of what Byrd calls the ‘culture of cronyism.’ Strickler has said in his Senate hearings that he believes mine and safety enforcement is adequate, which especially now is scandalous. He worked for Massey Energy, one of the most notorious scofflaws in the industry. Is a former leader of one of the industry’s major scofflaws the right person to lead this agency at this time?
“Big Coal has gotten its way by exploiting our political system. Between 2000 and 2004, federal campaign contributions by the Southern Company, a big coal-burning utility, were larger than ExxonMobil or General Motors.”
4) There are solutions that can make our mines safer.
“Senators Ted Kennedy (D-MA) and Mike Enzi (R-WY) have been pushing more oxygen canisters and better tracking systems in the mines on the Senate Workforce committee, but the House has been dragging its feet. Five months after the Sago and the Alma mine disasters, there still has not been any progress.
“The bill would require miners to have at least two hours of oxygen available instead of the one that the current policy requires. The bill also calls for mine operators also must store extra oxygen along escape routes. The bill would also require each mine to make available two experienced rescue teams capable of a one-hour response time, and it would compel mines to have two-way wireless communications and tracking systems in place within three years.
5) In the epilogue of his book, Big Coal: The Dirty Secret about America’s Energy Future, Jeff Goodell calls the coal industry “an empire of denial.” What does that mean? Jeff Goodell:
“The main reason we’re still burning over a billion tons of coal in America today is that the coal industry has been tremendously successful at keeping us ignorant about what goes on behind the light switch. It has worked hard to preserve the illusion that electricity flows down from a golden bowl in the sky, and that there is no link between America’s appetite for power and the millions of children in America who suffer from asthma, or the devastated mountains of West Virginia, or the fact that global warming threatens the stability of the earth’s atmosphere. In this sense, the comeback of coal is a political story. It’s about keeping America in the dark about what it takes to keep the lights on. I think that’s one reason why the recent deaths of 14 coal miners in West Virginia was so disturbing to many people. Coal miners labor underground, often in extremely dangerous and difficult conditions, so that the rest of us can crank up our heaters and air conditioners.
“The truth is, the world faces two enormous challenges in the coming years: the end of cheap oil and the arrival of global warming. Both are profound threats to our comfortable notions of civilized life. We should be grateful for the vast reserves of coal we have left and use them wisely, but it’s important to recognize that our bounty of coal is not going to save us from anything. At best, exploiting our coal reserves will buy us a decade or two of time and come at enormous expense, both in terms of the environment and public health and in terms of the billions of dollars that will be invested in a fuel source that is, at best, a short-term solution. In many ways, the world’s coal reserves only make our energy problems worse, because they give us a false sense of security: If we run out of gas and oil, we can just switch over to coal; if we can figure out a way to ‘clean’ coal, we can have a cheap, plentiful source of energy. In reality, however, facing the twin challenges of the end of oil and the coming of global warming is going to require reinventing the infrastructure of modern life. The most dangerous aspect of our continued dependence on coal is not what it does to our lungs, our mountains, or our even climate, but what it does to our minds: it preserves the illusion that we don’t have to change our thinking.”
JEFF GOODELL is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone and a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller “Our Story: 77 Hours That Tested Our Friendship and Our Faith,” based on the terrifying hours nine Quecreek miners spent trapped underground; he appeared on Oprah to talk with the miners about their experience. Goodell’s first book, The Cyberthief and the Samurai, was about the hunt for the notorious computer hacker Kevin Mitnick. His memoir, Sunnyvale: The Rise and Fall of a Silicon Valley Family, was a New York Times Notable Book.
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