Clinging to coal
For more than 100 years, Appalachia has relied on coal as its single engine of economic development.
When coal boomed, the region boomed and when coal went bust, so did the miners.
Now, as the internal combustion engine begins to give way to hybrids and plug-in electrics, Appalachia is still clinging stubbornly to the fuel of the steam age. And national politicians are cynically using that addiction to coal to further their own agendas.
Fox News reported this week that Republicans are using promises of new government support for coal to entice senator-elect Joe Manchin of West Virginia to switch parties. Among the promises reported are $1 billion in support for a plant in West Virginia to convert coal to diesel, and a requirement that the U.S. military use fuels produced from coal.
Never mind that emissions from coal already account for 20 percent of greenhouse gas emissions. Never mind that opposition to mountaintop removal mining is growing to the point that PNC Bank has become the latest bank to announce that it would no longer finance such mining operations, and the EPA has begun denying mining permits because of downstream damage.
We could argue the environmental impacts for years, but the economic realities are clear. The U.S. Geological Survey reported in July 2009 that regions where mining began early, like West Virginia, will begin running out of low-sulfur coal in 10 years. By the end of the century, the USGS predicts that coal production in the Appalachian Basin will be less than a third of 2009 levels.
That cold reality brings up a lot of questions that have nothing to do with a backroom political deal.
How can it make economic sense to spend a billion dollars to turn a fuel that is being depleted into a fuel that is becoming obsolete? How can it make political sense to float the idea a week after an election during which the majority of winning candidates spent the entire campaign screaming about reducing government spending?
How will it look to the world less than a month before the U.N. Framework Conference on Climate Change?
Even if proponents do get a billion dollars in deficit spending to build a coal-to-diesel plant, how long will it take to build?
Most importantly, perhaps, will the coal still be there when the plant is ready to accept its first block of coal?
