On my morning commute today, I passed many of the same old local attractions. A decrepit railway bridge spanning a stretch of the river near its convergence with a smaller waterway where red and orange dusty mud spewed from underground mines coats the banks and bed of the waters. A train yard littered with scrap metal, now showing signs of life. Coal mounds and black desert also line the route.
Everyone in this valley passes, every day, many reminders of the rampant exploitation of natural resources. These are so blatantly obvious that they have become nondescript.
As always, I passed the Twin Shaft disaster site, 58 miners entombed for eternity under hundreds of feet of rock. Their families are long dead, there is no one to remember.
We now have daily reports of trillions (with a capital “T”) of dollars of natural gas to be pumped out of the mountains just north of our comfortable little post-industrial wasteland. We have news of the creation of 200,000 jobs, and of a massive investment by the same people who are filling the Gulf of Mexico with crude oil. These are the same types of people, by the way, who lorded it over our coal mining ancestors 100 years ago.
After so many decades below the poverty line, the people of our region welcome the opportunity to earn some money. Their concerns about the water supply are put aside so they can receive checks for what appear to be huge sums of money. Who could blame them?
Perhaps the spirits of the hundreds and thousands of miners injured and killed in the mines. They came from the old faraway countries to find better lives for their descendants. They wanted their children to be educated and free from oppression and starvation. In general, they achieved that goal.
I suspect that miners would want their descendants to be smarter, to look around and know, based on the lessons of the past and present, that our country’s endless need for fuel puts the environment second only to the Profits. I think the miners would want their great-grandchildren to get paid to sell this fuel.
I also think the miners would know who they are dealing with. The miners progressed by forming unions at the price of the blacklisting of the mine owners and the excommunication of the church. These energy executives, like the coal and railroad barons 100 years ago, are shamelessly profiting from the world’s energy needs. We should capitalize on their need for our energy.
These companies are buying gas rights for five cents and selling them for ten cents within six months.
Let’s organize, unite and endure. This time, let’s pay before they take what they’re going to get in any case. With enough money, we can move or drink bottled water. If they want our land, make them buy it at a premium.
The historical odds are that the extraction of this fuel will ruin the environment and the water supply. When the fuel runs out, the region will relapse into the stagnation typical of a decimated mining country. When that happens, the Endless Mountains will contain nothing but endless abandoned drilling rigs, rusting equipment, towns with empty storefronts, and polluted streams and rivers. The locals will look at them every day, and everything will seem normal to their grandchildren.
Whoever forgets history is doomed to repeat it.
What about those who remember?
