KING COAL: What It Costs Us

Underground coal miners work in the darkness, invisible to most of us, and when they die — also in the darkness, from methane explosions or rock falls or any of the hundreds of other hazards they face every day — their deaths usually merit just a few paragraphs in the local newspaper.

The attempted rescue of trapped coal miners, on the other hand, is often headline news. Networks love the real-time drama of the rescue efforts — it’s reality TV from the heartland, complete with anguished family members, heroic workers and dodgy mine owners. Sometimes, these stories have happy endings.

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Many Americans think that coal went out with top hats and corsets. In fact, we burn more than a billion tons of coal each year in the United States — about 20 pounds a day for every man, woman and child. We don’t burn it in coal stoves, of course, but in big power plants that generate about half the electric power in the country.

Politically, the war in Iraq has been a boon for coal, allowing coal-friendly politicians to tout America’s 250-year supply as a substitute for our addiction to Middle Eastern oil — even though, in the real world, there is no overlap between coal (used to generate electricity) and oil (used for transportation fuels, among other things). This is not to say that the coal industry would not dearly love to get into America’s gas tank. In recent months, it has pushed hard for subsidies and tax breaks that would accelerate the construction of coal-to-liquid plants, a technology developed by the Nazis during the 1930s that can transform coal into liquid fuels such as diesel (for technical reasons, it’s very difficult to make gasoline from coal).

Coal boosters argue that today’s industry is nothing like the industry of yore, and that many of the problems with the fuel — like the fact that air pollution from power plants kills people — have been solved by new technology. Coal is cheap, plentiful and clean, they say. What’s not to like?

Mine disasters such as the one in Utah, however, don’t exactly fit this script. It’s tough to argue that you’ve left the 19th century behind when you have Murray — one of the most prominent coal barons in the United States, well known for his political connections and influence — insisting that the collapse was caused by an earthquake, directly contradicting seismologists who say that their instruments clearly show that the seismic activity was the result of the collapse in the mine. It may not surprise you that Murray also believes global warming is a hoax.

Claims about a 250-year supply of coal won’t stand up to scrutiny for long, either. Yes, the United States has more coal than any other nation. But we’ve been mining coal in this country for 150 years — all the simple, high-quality, easy-to-get stuff is gone. What’s left is buried beneath towns and national parks, or places that are difficult, expensive and dangerous to mine. The blunt truth is, if we’re going to become more dependent on coal, more miners will die. How many mining tragedies will we accept in the name of “cheap” electricity?

Washington Post