Cheap Energy: Fast Coal for a Fast Buck

By Andrea Hensen and Margaret Krumm

I recently asked Chad, my brother-in-law, why he exchanged his corn and wood pellet stove for one that burns coal, and his initial response was that coal is cheaper. As we continued talking, I became aware of how easily the market can become the sole dictator of the choices we make about how we live. Just in time to remedy my feeling of growing superiority over Chad came the realization that I have no idea where corn, coal, or even the gas that heats my apartment comes from.

Because of an unrelated last-minute decision to trek down to Appalachia, I do know a bit more about coal now. I must admit though that I waiver between being glad for the knowledge and wishing I could regain my ignorance.

A hike overlooking the New River Gorge took us past abandoned deep mines. This set the context—coal mining: formerly manual labor undertaken by thousands of hands—for the next day and a half, during which we spoke to people in the area affected by the new way coal is extracted from the earth: 19 hands ignite dynamite and control machines reaching 22 stories, literally moving mountains. The math is easy; only a fraction of the jobs the industry once required is left. Is it any wonder that West Virginia is the nation’s poorest state?

Big coal companies are destroying the region’s landscape and economic viability. They are also contributing to the destruction of the identity of one the most unique and isolated ancestral cultures in the United States. Up on Kayford Mountain lives Larry Gibson, one of the loudest voices against mountaintop removal. It’s not hard to see why; his mountain used to be the shortest one around. Now it is the tallest, an island amidst a sea of loose dirt half-heartedly covered with a foreign grass capable of growing without top soil.

“See that ridge over there?” he asked us, pointing. “That’s my family’s cemetery. They pushed all but 11 graves into the ravine.”  Any remaining sympathies I may have had for the coal company vanished.  

How do you answer the casual how-was-your-weekend question after a weekend like this? I can’t honestly say it was good. “It was strange and difficult; I felt at once motivated to work to change the course of history and a desire to give up and fall prostrate, crying ‘Come, Lord Jesus’ for the rest of my life.”

Never has the tension between 'Already' and 'Not-yet' seemed so palpable.