Longwall Mining Struggle

This post is in direct response to a comment Steve made to my "Common Sense is not Common" post. He wondered how it was that our Federal/State Agencies, created to protect us from Environmental degradation, had become our enemy. And, more importantly, what we could do about it.

The first part is pretty simple. Those with money have access, those of us without, don't. People in Federal/State, or whatever type of government, act generally on the information they have at hand. If one point of view is all that gets through to them, that is likely to be the way their decisions are skewed.

There is a long term struggle going on in the world of longwall mining. The industry is on one side. Their primary purpose is to get coal out of the ground as cheaply as possible and get it to market. Since they are beholden to their stockholder's, they are bottom line driven.

On the other side are those of us called, for the sake of brevity, environmentalists. Our side of the struggle concerns our homes, our water, the organisms that populate our local environment, followed naturally by our global environment.

Those in the longwall mining camp have very deep pockets and are quite adept at buying influence no matter the political Party. Therefore, they have access to those who make the decisions in government.

Those of us arrayed on the other side generally speaking do not have a lot of money and are splintered, so that although we may be fighting like hell, we have no access. And, our outcries to those in power seem like simply a few disgruntled crazies.

There are however, ways of shining a very bright light on things of import. In this case, I will use a recent action by the nonprofit organization, Citizens Coal Council. They have issued a letter of intent to sue the Department of the Interior for failing to enforce the laws they have been charged with upholding.

Two large issues are brought into the light with this action. First, the obvious, Interior hasn't been doing the job for which they are responsible. The other is to expose the cockroaches in the room. Specifically, Joseph Pizarchik, the coal industry shill who has been nominated to oversee the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement. Since we know that Joe is in the pocket of industry, the way to force those deciding his fate in government to do their due diligence is to place his malfeasance squarely in front of them, and us.

This struggle, any struggle, generally has a host of skirmishes before the thing is settled. This is a skirmish. If we win, that is a good thing for us and the world writ large. If we lose, we move on to the next skirmish and continue the struggle. That Steve, is what we do about the government not doing what it is we elect them to do. We continue to fight.