General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe New Tragedy of Coal Country
?w=1200&q=65&dpi=1.2000000476837158&fm=pjpg&fit=crop&crop=faces&h=800Tuesday was the day the Environmental Protection Agency came to West Virginia. The agencys industry-friendly administrator, Scott Pruitt, had agreed to hold exactly one public hearing on his plan to repeal the Clean Power PlanPresident Barack Obamas signature climate change regulationand 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 industryand 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.
https://newrepublic.com/article/146015/new-tragedy-coal-country
HughBeaumont
(24,461 posts)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
(70,582 posts)... 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
(37,453 posts)wait until they lose welfare, might be the breaking point.
kentuck
(111,110 posts)Gullibility.
LeftinOH
(5,358 posts)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
(6,401 posts)...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
(135,875 posts)Dulcinea
(6,661 posts)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
(82,849 posts)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.