Coal Country
My husband and I went to the theater last week to see Coal Country. The play is a retelling of one of the worst mine disasters in the US. On April 5, 2010, the Upper Big Branch mine in Montcoal, WV, experienced an explosion that killed 29 miners, devastating a town and region. The outcome reports showed multiple flagrant safety violations, which ultimately led to the conviction of management, including the CEO Don Blankenship.
The deeply emotional play presents the story from the miners’ perspective. And while some paid a price for the disaster, in the end it was a minor penalty in the scheme of things. In 2012, the mine was closed for good.
In the world of sustainability, it is easy to think about transitioning from fossil fuels to renewal energy sources. Let’s kill off the fossil fuels because of their high carbon emissions and concentrate our future on the energy sources that are low-to-zero carbon emissions. Building that infrastructure is hard, though. Transitioning from fossil fuels to other energy involves lots of changes in infrastructure not to mention the impact on people.
As we drove home from the theater, my husband and I talked about the life of miners and how much they do to make our lives easier. I happen to know something about this business as my dad and two brothers are mining engineers and extended family are still mining coal in Western Pennsylvania. Mining coal is one of the most dangerous jobs there is. Every day a coal miner must contend with the risk of injury or death. From minor explosions to accidents moving heavy equipment to electrical hazards to back-breaking work, the job is not for the faint of heart. Yet, our economy still relies on coal as a major source of energy. From the traffic lights in town to driving steel mills to heating/cooling/lighting our homes and businesses, coal is still an important part of our current infrastructure. These miners are the ones who labor underground, risking their lives, to bring the rest of us a comfortable way of being.
When we talk of transitioning to cleaner energy sources, we need to consider what happens to the coal miner. These are highly paid people in regions of the country with little other job opportunities. Jobs in renewal energy don’t come close to paying what a coal miner earned. What happens to these people when the mines close and there is literally nothing to replace it? What responsibility do we have to help these people and bring them along to a new cleaner world?
Thankfully, there are groups working on this issue. Solar Holler and Coalfield Development are just two groups who are helping the Appalachia region transition. They work to transfer closed coal mines into solar and/or wind farms. They also work to retrain miners that gets them back to the living wages they are used to.
That’s the mark of a great play. It made us think about things in ways that we may not have done otherwise. It’s easy to talk about migrating to new energy sources. It’s also easy to build out the new infrastructure. What’s hard, however, is remembering the impact of this transition on the people, their families, and the communities where they live.
You can listen to Coal Country, including Steve Earle’s music, at Audible.
