The Pathetic Local Justifications of Mountaintop Removal

Mountaintop removal is one of the greatest environmental travesties in the world today. It is almost without question the most severe environmental degradation issue the United States faces today. I have argued before that nobody cares much because it takes place in West Virginia and eastern Kentucky, a land filled with conservative poor white people that environmentalists neither know nor trust.

But in any case, the coal industry and their local stooges consistently pull out this refrain for justifying why mountaintop removal is good for the local community:

"A lot of people look at mountain top removal [mining] as a negative, but I see it as a positive. We need to stop apologizing for coal ... I want us to promote mountain top removal, because we need flat land. We can not have economic expansion without places to do things and part of mountain top removal is for places like hospitals, airports and different type of merchants."

Lieutenant Governor Daniel Mongiardo, Kentucky. Via Grist.

I have seen this exact same refrain before in other places, particularly local West Virginia and Kentucky newspapers. It is utterly absurd to anyone who knows the area. Flattening mountains will never bring economic prosperity to southern Appalachia. Big business is simply not going to move there. Unless they flatten the whole region, the roads are too narrow and the area is too far away from major cities to make sense as an industrial hub. The citizens, in no small part because of the rapacious coal companies, are among the poorest and least well-educated in the country. The jobs they want to compete for are already in the developing world, because no matter how much the coal industry tears apart Appalachia and no matter how desperate the citizens are for decent work, they are not going to be able to compete with the cheap labor of Mexico, Guatemala, Bangladesh, and 50 other nations across the world.

I also don't think that the coal companies and local elites who make these arguments really believe other businesses will move into the region either. They claim these benefits to justify the incredible environmental and economic damage they are doing to Appalachia. By giving people false hope for a better future, they undermine the legitimate criticism they get from local citizens groups and those few people in other parts of the country who care about what is happening there.

Coal companies are the single most evil entity in the United States. I firmly believe this.