Change? Forget About It

A year ago yesterday, the Massey Energy owned Upper Big Branch coal mine caved in, killing 29 miners.

One might think this disaster would cause a change in how government agencies regulate coal mines, if not behavior by the evil coal companies.


Of course, you'd be wrong in thinking that.

In this climate, corporations are creating change, not responding to it. With regulatory agencies underfunded (and Obama has done little to alleviate this problem) and staffed by ex-industry people, regulation is as weak and demoralized as ever.

There could be another 29 dead miners tomorrow. It would get attention for a few weeks. And then things would go back to normal.

Rinse and repeat.

Historical Image of the Day

Striking coal miners, Pittston Coal Strike, Virginia, 1989

Pittston was one of labor's biggest successes of the late 20th century,

Could Mountaintop Removal Be Ending?

There's been very little good news on the environmental front, but one of the real positives is the decline of mountaintop removal. It has come under attack from several fronts due its massive environmental damage to one of America's most biological diverse regions and to the residents who live there.

Just today, the EPA denied a permit for the largest single mountaintop removal permit in West Virginia history.

EPA officials this morning were alerting West Virginia’s congressional delegation to their action, and undoubtedly preparing for a huge backlash from the mining industry and its friends among coalfield political leaders.

In making its decision to veto the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ approval of the 2,300-acre mine proposed for the Blair area of Logan County, EPA noted that it reviewed more than 50,000 public comments and held a major public hearing in West Virginia. EPA officials said their agency is “acting under the law and using the best science available to protect water quality, wildlife and Appalachian communities who rely on clean waters for drinking, fishing and swimming.”

That backlash will no doubt come fast and hard.  I noted yesterday that the EPA is under attack from not only Republicans but many Democrats as well. We'll see a bipartisan attack here too. And maybe, under the next Republican president, we see a return to an EPA serving as a rubber stamp for the coal industry in the same way that Democratic West Virginia senators do today. But maybe government regulations isn't the most important factor here.

Regardless of the government, mountaintop removal operations cost a lot of money to finance. Coal companies need to get bank loans for those operations. Increasingly, banks are pulling out of financing those operations. It's rare that capitalist institutions can engineer positive social change. But with significant international pressure against mountaintop removal (much more so than domestic pressure), banks are deciding they don't want to be associated with such a destructive remaking of the planet. PNC Bank's November 2010 decision to pull out of financing mountaintop removal is especially important it is such a prominent institution in Appalachia.

Combined with international discomfort at investing into climate change exacerbating energy sources such as a coal, it may well be that we are in the last years of mountaintop removal. We can only hope that's true.

Rural Environmentalists vs. Urban Environmentalists

Environmentalism is a multi-faceted movement. It has many strains and they often disagree. Many of these disagreements fall on a rural-urban divide. Urban concerns have always driven environmentalism, from the creation of national parks and hunting laws to ensure leisure for the urban upper classes to the Sierra Club's expansion in the 1950s because suburbanites wanted forest playgrounds. That doesn't mean rural people don't care about nature. Today there are many rural environmentalists and though self-identified environmentalists might be a minority in rural communities, they can certainly build bridges with conservatives who also like to be in woods and deserts.

Not infrequently, the needs of urban and rural environmentalists diverge. Recent developments in Colorado are an excellent case study. Governor Bill Ritter, who is not friendly with Colorado's not insignificant coal industry, has allied himself with urban environmentalists and the natural gas industry to promote natural gas production in the state. Urban environmentalists support this because Front Range cities suffer from bad air pollution. Natural gas burns cleaner than coal.

But this upsets rural communities because natural gas production leads to air pollution in their communities.

What to do? Producing any kind of energy has negative consequences. The question is who pays the price? In this case, it does seem that the urban dwellers have the better case--their bad affects the health of millions. And burning coal is never a good idea for nature. But this also reinforces the strong belief in rural communities that their environments are nothing more than a playground and space for exploitation by urban people. It's hard to deny that reality.

Try Don Blankenship For Murder

The Times has a fantastic demonstrating the difference in safety conditions between Massey Energy coal mines, such as the one that recently killed 29 West Virginia miners, and mines owned by companies that actually care about safety. They profile TECO Coal Corporation, also non-union, but a company that is almost accident free. Meanwhile, Massey president Don Blankenship specifically undermines safety precautions.

And the attention to safety — or the lack of it — has had measurable results: Compared with the industry average, TECO’s workers spent much less time away from work because of injury last year; Upper Big Branch workers spent significantly more.

TECO’s mine has had far fewer safety violations over the last five years than Massey’s, and the company has been less inclined than Massey to fight with regulators. Massey has contested 69 percent of the proposed $1.9 million in civil penalties proposed by the mine safety agency since the beginning of 2005, federal records show. 

Now, in the wake of a catastrophe that has all of West Virginia in mourning, the trail of federal violations issued to Upper Big Branch, many of them in the weeks leading up to the explosion, seems infused with foreboding.

“The methane and dust control plan is not being followed.”
“The lifeline in the primary escape way” is not being maintained.
“In case of an emergency the men on this section would not have fresh air in the primary escapeway.”

“Management engaged in aggravated conduct constituting more than ordinary negligence, in that production was deemed more important than conducting parameter checks.”

Massey miners knew their lives were in danger.

Well before this month’s fatal explosion at Upper Big Branch, the country’s worst mine disaster in 40 years, the lack of proper ventilation had been a continuing concern among its miners. The fear of methane building while oxygen dropped preyed on their minds.

“I have had guys come to me and cry,” said the veteran foreman. “Grown men cried — because they are scared.”

But workers in the mine said they did not dare question the company’s safety practices, even when asked to perform a dubious task

“It was all about production,” said Andrew Tyler, 22, an electrician who two years ago worked as a subcontractor on the wiring for the coal conveyer belt and other equipment at Upper Big Branch. “If you worked for them, you didn’t ask questions about whether some step like running a cable around the breaker was a smart idea. You just did it.”

 Did Don Blankenship care? Hell no.

The miner belonged to a crew working in Massey’s Aracoma Alma mine. In a memorandum issued three months before this fire and widely disseminated in 2006, Mr. Blankenship, the company’s chief executive, ordered subordinates to run coal and ignore everything else. A week later he sent a follow-up memo saying that, of course, safety comes first — and that he would “question the membership” of any employee who thought he meant anything other than that.

Now, on the evening of Jan. 19, 2006, just hours after Aracoma officials received yet another handwritten note from Mr. Blankenship — “Stay on coal,” it said in part — a fire had broken out, again, on a misaligned conveyor belt, there was no water, and smoke was thickening.

This first-rate investigative piece tells me that Don Blankenship and the corporate leaders of Massey Energy absolutely do not care about the lives of their workers. Such criminal negligence suggests that Blankenship should be tried on a murder charge, or at least manslaughter.  Corporate leaders who directly cause the deaths of their workers need to be accountable. If the Supreme Court has decided that corporations deserve full personhood, those corporations should also have the responsibilities of full personhood. If I do something that leads to the death of 29 people, I would go to prison. So should Don Blankenship.

Massey Keeping It Classy

Massey Energy Company, the owners of the collapsed West Virginia mine that killed 29 people, sure has felt remorse for their actions:

Massey Energy, the Virginia-based coal giant that runs the Upper Big Branch Mine, has denied time off for miners to attend their friends’ funerals; has rejected makeshift memorials outside the mine site; and, in at least one case, required a worker to go on shift even though the fate of a relative — one of the victims of the April 5 disaster — remained unknown at the time, according to some family members and other sources familiar with those episodes. In short, the company might be taking heat for putting profits and efficiency above its workers, but it doesn’t appear to have changed its tune in the wake of the worst mining tragedy in 40 years.

Of course,  Massey holds all the cards. We've already forgotten about the West Virginia tragedy. The disaster hasn't led us to rethink coal, to demand more regulations for coal, or anything else. There will be a brief uptick in safety inspections and then everything will be back to normal. Massey will continue to not value its workers lives or dignity. They will continue resisting unionization. They will continue lobbying to undermine safety regulations. And we will still flip on our lights and air conditioners. We have blood on our hands too, but we don't care.

This is the Face of Clean Coal

Or is this the face of Clean Coal?

Or perhaps this?

Or this?

Of course, these are all the faces of clean coal. Coal leads to environmental and human disasters. It leads to the death of 29 miners in West Virginia. It destroys mountains. It tears families apart.

All energy sources have negative consequences. But none so much as coal. The coal companies, especially Massey Energy, which owns the collapsed West Virginia mine, do everything in their power to avoid taking the slightest responsibility for their workers lives or for the Appalachian Mountains. They constantly lobby to weaken safety laws and then continue lobbying to weaken enforcement. They avoid basic safety measures in the mines.

The coal industry still operates in the Gilded Age. They still see their workers as expendable labor in impoverished states with high unemployment rates. They still would like to shoot union organizers and other agitators. In fact, all of Massey's mines remain non-union and Massey president Don Blankenship has threatened to shoot reporters. United Mine Workers president Cecil Roberts has compared Blankenship to the operators of the violent days of the 1910s and 20s.

The coal industry wants the nation to forget about their industry and their mines and the dead workers and the destroyed mountains. Instead, just turn on your lights and bask in coal-fired power. And they have largely succeeded. With the exceptions of mine explosions and dead workers, we have collectively forgotten about coal miners. We make fun of West Virginia rather than sympathize with the people who live there. We forget about the dangerous working conditions. We pay no attention to the fact that the coal industry basically owns the West Virginia state legislature and, to a lesser extent, Kentucky as well.

The coal industry and our relationship to it personifies many unfortunate characteristics of the United States: environmental waste, forgetting about the people who make the products that allow us to live comfortably, allowing corporations to control politics and set regulations. And the recent deaths of 29 workers won't change a bit of it. It'll be in the news for another few days, in the progressive blogosphere for another week or two, and then forgotten about by everyone except for those few of us who follow the coal industry's malevolent dealings.

Vetoing Mountaintop Removal Permit

In another example of the game "Elections Have Consequences," the Environmental Protection Agency is likely to veto a previously approved mountaintop removal coal mining project in West Virginia. This project would have been the largest single mountaintop removal operation in history.

Of course, any reasonable application of existing environmental legislation should make these operations illegal. When the mountain is blown up and disposed of in the valleys below, it destroys the water, thus violating the Clean Water Act. Finally, the EPA is moving to enforce the regulations.

Now, this hardly means the end of mountaintop removal, but at least an emboldened EPA will at least halt the most egregious coal operations. 

The Face of Coal Pollution

This is Maximiliano Calcano. He is 2 years old. He has no arms because an American power company is dumping coal ash in his neighborhood in the Dominican Republic. Birth defects are rampant in his neighborhood. He has no arms because we as a nation have decided a) to make coal the dominant part of our power supply and b) to dump the byproducts of our consumerist lifestyles on the poor of the developing world.

Much more from this Miami Herald article.

Via Coal Tattoo

Technology is Not the Answer

The American technology fetish continues unabated and almost unchallenged. We think we can solve all of our problems through new technologies. This includes environmental problems. For instance, the Times is all excited about a West Virginia coal plant refitted to bury some of its carbon emissions. Basically, the carbon dioxide will be pumped into the ground several hundred feet below the surface. If this works, the argument goes, we can counteract many of our global warming issues. Clean coal indeed!

There are myriad problems though. As the article suggests in a brief respite from fawning over the idea, no one actually knows what's going to happen to that carbon dioxide. Will it stay in the ground? Some fear it could lead to earthquakes. What we do know is that it will lead to some kind of unintended consequences. All of our big technological projects throughout history have led to unintended consequences. The ultimate example is climate change; no one intended that this would happen or even guessed that it could, but it surely is despite that. Trend's discussion below of dams and the destruction of river deltas is another great example. Something will happen with that carbon. Burying it underground and then forgetting about it is not going to solve our problems.

In other words:

Technology. Is. Not. The. Answer.

We cannot continue to rely solely on technology to get us out of the messes we make because that technology usually creates more messes.

The other major problem with this technology is a continued focus on consumption rather than production as the real problem with burning coal. As a society, we do not care what damage natural resource production causes, whether that's oil in Kuwait, minerals in Bolivia, or coal in West Virginia. Out of sight, out of mind. It's the tangible signs of pollution that we care about--refineries belting out poisonous gases, discolored rivers, the feeling that each summer is warmer than the last. But the people of West Virginia are seeing their lives destroyed by the coal companies, the land undergoing permanent alterations that leave it a man-made desert. Isn't this important too.

Clean coal is a lie. Don't believe it. We have to get off coal as soon as possible. This needs to be a national priority. Technology is not going to solve our problems. Even switching to wind and solar energy will have unintended consequences. But nothing is worse than burning coal.

The Bush Environmental Legacy

The Times explorers the nightmarish Bush environmental legacy, compiling an excellent report on the massive EPA violations the administration allowed. To be specific, the Bush administration both hamstrung the EPA and got the word out to the states that violations would be pretty much ignored. Because of this, water is polluted throughout the country. Water quality has reached lows not seen since before the Clean Water Act was passed; in some places, particularly in the Appalachian coal country, it is far worse. The picture here from the Times article is the effects of this water tattooed upon a young boy's body.

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, it was concerns like this that fueled the environmental movement. That could happen again today. But polluters are smarter today. Rather than dump coal slurry directly into the rivers, the coal companies are pumping it back into deserted mines. No one sees it, but it is still disposed straight into the water supply.

Clearly this needs to be a top priority for the Obama Administration. Activists interviewed in the article express some hope. But with climate change the top priority for Obama, they also wonder to what extent his appointees will pay enough attention to water to make a difference. What the EPA needs is a massive influx of funding to enforce laws against polluters. Perhaps funding the EPA through violations would be a good idea--there are dangers with agencies getting funding from those they punish (see the police and drug seizures), but this is a case where it could make a real positive difference.

License Plates I Will Not Be Getting

Would you like this image on your license plate? If you live in West Virginia, you soon may be able to fulfill your dreams. This is such a great idea. I am thinking of some other great license plates.

Oregonians for Deforestation
Buddies with Nuclear Waste (this would obviously include a cuddly figure snuggling with a piece of plutonium)
Mississippi Thanks Segregationists
Americans for AIG

Really, the possibilities are endless. And if you are going to express your love for destroying mountains, dumping their remains in valleys where people live, and creating climate change, you might as well go all the way.

Via Coal Tattoo.

Why I Have Little Hope on Environmental Issues

If people start turning to heating their homes through burning coal on a large scale, the environmental damage is going to be massive.

The problem is that I don't see much of an alternative for people. Americans want cheap fuel. They want to live a life of big consumption. If natural gas or electricity or fuel oil is too expensive, people are going to turn to the cheapest and easiest alternative, with absolutely no thought toward the environmental damage it may cause.

I sympathize with people on this issue--who doesn't want to heat their house at affordable costs? But I really believe that as resources become more scarce, it is not going to lead to people taking nature into account. Rather, there will be a rush to grab what is left and a move to mine every bit of coal, drill ever drop of oil, cut down every last tree, and kill every wild animal. It almost seems like human nature and I despair at what to do about it.

On the other hand, the Europeans seem much better at dealing with these problems than we do. Maybe there is hope across the pond.