Preachy About Green Myopia

I am settling in quite nicely here in Welch, WV. You never really know how much you have missed something until it’s gone and then back again. Southern hospitality was something I craved during my time in Colorado, but I never realized just how much I wanted (no, needed) it until I cam back to Appalachia.

However, I have never seen Southern West Virginia in the way that I have seen it since I’ve been back. Having spent three years away from here makes the difference. But, not only did I spend three years away, I spent it in one of the nation’s wealthier states, living in a city that throws money around like its confetti. After watching so much wasteful spending and gluttonous living standards, returning to a place in decay is shocking.

Welch was once a thriving community… When coal was still king, anyway. But coal is not king any longer, at least not to the folks who live in the coalfields. Jobs are scarce and unreliable and the coal industry really does not support the local economy as it once did. But coal is still the cultural norm here, so folks do not speak ill of it.

I took a long drive through the country the other day and as I neared Gary, WV I passed an abandoned piece of mine property. An old, rusted piece of equipment still stood as a ghostly reminder of yesterday and on the side was spray-painted the words, “Coal keeps the light on.” It’s the catch phrase of the coal industry in these parts and has become a rallying battle cry for those who feel their livelihoods are being threatened by the environmentalist-driven push toward green energies.

There was truth in that relic, though. It stands abandoned and forgotten by the original builders, left to rot into non-existence by a society that used it for all its worth and then turned its back on it, and still cherished by the people who labored in its shadows for so long, who cling to hope that it will one day glisten in the sun as it did once before.

The people of Southern West Virginia have been treated much the same way. For generations they labored at a dangerous and thankless job and told they weren’t worth anything by the society that used up the coal they mined. So they bent over and crawled, day after day, into the dangerous mines with no advocate to help them. When they decided that they were worth something, they had to fight against the coal companies, society, and the government to win basic rights to a safe working environment. Even still, they worked one of the most dangerous jobs in the world. And those who survived their years in the mines were cast aside when they grew old, their lungs as black as the coal they dug and slowly turning to rock in their chests. They were left to slowly suffocate to death, and no one blinked an eye. But they fought for recognition then, too. And now they have come under attack again. The same people who grew up in the privilege awarded by the coalminer’s hard work… who learned in schools powered by their coal, in building built from steel that came from their coal… those same people have turned on the coal industry with a rabid vengeance, forgetting that it was the greedy demands of American society that dug those mines and killed those men who crawled into them. And as America fights to shut down the mines, there is little mention of what will happen to the young men and women who need those jobs in the mine to keep their children free of poverty.

Now, I am all for progress. I am all for green energy sources. And I am all for being good stewards of this land. Coal is a thing of the past, and the day will come that we will no longer need it… in an ideal world, that day will come, that is… but I worry about the people.

American society told the people of Appalachia that their way of existing wasn’t good enough and they needed to enter the industrial period. The people of Appalachia did and they paid a dear price. They lost their land to greedy swindlers; they lost their lives to an energy-hungry America. Now, they are being told that their industry is evil and that it shouldn’t exist. But where is the promise of work? Where is the promise of life?

The green movement needs to go forward, but it should not take another step until it has added to its agenda a fight for the humanity of the people that gluttonous living standards disregarded long ago. After all, it was the very greed of cities like Denver that dug the dark tombs of the Appalachian coal miners. The green movement cannot condemn the coal dust-stained hands of Appalachia until it has acknowledged its own bloodstained hands.