Something’s Not Clicking in West Virginia
If your house is on fire, do you a) call 911, b) get everyone out safely, or c) find a flammable liquid and douse the fire liberally near the base of the flames? If you chose c), you have what it takes to be the governor of West Virginia.
Meet Jim Justice, who manages a state where rampant mountaintop removal is destroying the landscape and poisoning the water in local rivers and streams. It’s the same state where people are showing up at hospitals with nausea and eye infections, because industrial chemical manufacturers can’t keep 10,000 gallons of toxins from leaking into a major river.
From a West Virginia newspaper: After issuing two executive orders establishing regulatory reform and a regulatory moratorium earlier this year, Gov. Jim Justice has issued a third order he says will speed up economic development in West Virginia. “Like our President, Donald J. Trump, I have been very focused on regulatory reform and will aggressively continue those efforts in our state,” Justice said in a prepared statement.
There are many tragic aspects to this “poison for profit” approach to attracting investors to a state that is already home to such a broad range of human misery (WV ranks #49 in both life expectancy and economic opportunity), but perhaps the saddest is that it continues to run full-speed in the precise wrong direction.
Does anyone really believe that jobs in coal mining are coming back? No. Might the future of economic growth lie in solar? Wind? Efficiency solutions? Electric transportation? Energy storage? Sustainable agriculture? Any or all of the above?
Could be. Might be worth a shot. Here’s something that seems pretty clear: poisoning your people is not the way out.
Craig,
“Does anyone really believe that jobs in coal mining are coming back? No.”.
Er,… YES !
In West Virginia more than 1,500 miners have been re-employed along with an estimated 5800 jobs in support industries with a further 16000 jobs indirectly. By 2020 another 5-7000 jobs will be created by a resurgent coal industry in land reclamation and rehabilitation.
These projects will create long term employment in forestry, land management, waste usage etc. This in turn will create long term employment providing community services, both commercial and public for the people of rural West Virginia.
Thanks to the Presidents initiatives, employment in the Coal has not only stopped decreasing, but is undergoing a renaissance. Even more surprising when you consider the Coal industry is undergoing a natural loss in employment due to increasing automation and competition from natural gas. Investment in US-made mining machinery has recommenced and two major manufacturers saved from either closing or moving overseas.
What also often ignored by critics, is the monumental task achieved by the President in ‘saving’ jobs. Only two years ago, over 200,000 jobs (directly and indirectly)were expected to be lost by 2020 by the previous administrations anti-coal policies. The ripple effect throughout US manufacturing and the desolation of rural communities into extinction or poverty was gathering pace at an alarming rate.
It’s all too easy for arm-chair wiseacres in Santa Barbara to pass judgement on folk in less blessed regions. Maybe it’s because Gov. Jim Justice doesn’t sneer or call his constituents “deplorable” that gets him elected !
Craig,
Speaking of ancient mining industries, the tin mines of Britain are very ancient and there’s evidence of Phoenician traders visiting Cornwall to trade for Tin as early as 2500 years ago.
The tin mines of Cornwall were considered relics of a bygone era. After four centuries of operation in 1998 the last Cornish tin mine finally closed. Global tin demand dropped to 200,000 tonnes a year, and tin prices languished at below $5,000 per ton.
Suddenly, everything has changed !
Thanks to new uses electronics, such as a replacement for toxic lead as soldering agent, demand has risen to around 350,000 tonnes. Tin can also be used in lithium-ion batteries, as a result Tin prices have climbed above $22,000 per tons making those old mines economic again.
(It’s good news for my brother and me, since our family has owned a number of old disused tin mines in Cornwall and Devon for over 200 years)
Even better news is our geological expert reports a strong possibility of economically viable lithium and even Tungsten deposits in the same vicinity as our old Tin mining sites. I remember as a young boy spending a holiday at old Cornish mine sites. One of the mines was reputed to have existed in Roman times and was worked by slaves.
I call recall recruiting some local lads (and a few tougher girls) to explore the old workings. Paying no heed to the dangerous condition of these mines, thinking ourselves indestructible, we managed to find all kinds of historic treasures, but none of any real value, until one of the tougher local girls found a small vein of silver.
The vein was small, but still yielded 611 troy ounces. I had a local craftsman make 11 engraved silver tankards for my small team of miners as a commemoration of the adventure, plus 11 rings for each participant and a necklace, ear rings, and ring set with local topaz for the young girl who discovered the vein.
By an odd twist of fate, forty-five years after this adventure I was amazed to learn 7 of the children who took part in my mad adventure had emigrated to Australia in the intervening years, and thanks to the diligence of one of the team, (a retired NSW police officer) contacted all of our little band still alive, and arranged for a reunion. I was amazed to see 9 of the mugs had survived and the young girls grand daughter still proudly wore her late mothers necklace.
The lesson I learned was how much community feeling and pride these small mining communities possess.
It would be great to bring prosperity back to a relatively economically deprived area of the UK.
You write: “The lesson I learned was how much community feeling and pride these small mining communities possess….It would be great to bring prosperity back to a relatively economically deprived area of the UK.”
I’m with you 100%. I’m sure there is a huge amount of pride in small mining communities, and everyone with even the slightest bit of compassion would love to bring prosperity back to these (and all similarly deprived) people.
The issue, of course, is the environment. The U.S. coal industry employed 76,572 people in 2014, out of 126 million total full-time employees, or 0.06% or 1/1667 of the total. Given the trade-off between a) forcing these people into early retirement/job retraining or b) not phasing out the coal industry with the vast damage it’s doing to the health and safety of everyone on this planet, it’s hard to imagine any objective person’s selecting b).
Craig,
The coal industry still provides nearly one third of all the energy the US needs to employ the other 120 million people.
As for export, US government exports of coal to Russia’s smaller neighbors are proving a very practical and effective counter-measure against Russia’s energy dominance.
Without coal, where will the money come from to rehabilitate the land, provide services etc ?
Nations like India are beginning to mine and use the benefits of Coal energy while minimizing and mitigating negative environmental and health issues. The answer lies in clean technology for the coal industry, not politically or ideologically based prohibition.
Hasn’t the US suffered enough from the folly of hysterical prohibitionists ?