Workin' In a Coal Mine

[libertango]

I've been reading Barbara Freese's Coal: A Human History, which has been very insightful in all sorts of unexpected ways.

Today I came across something of a bombshell, buried about 2/3s into the book.

See, coal is a disproportionate source of CO₂. I don't have the book in front of me, but it's on the order of it provides 22% of our energy, but 34% our carbon emissions. That means any substantive cut in greenhouse gases necessarily means you have to do something about coal, and there's really only two things you can do: scrub the CO₂ out as best you can, or switch to low-sulfur coal -- which mostly comes from the western states, rather than Appalachia, where the traditional mines are.

So the coal industry has been fighting tooth and claw against the very idea of global climate change. They've been using very tobacco-like tactics: Financing "opposition" research; denying there's any problem with coal at all; etc.

It gets to be 2000. And Albert, Prince of the Tennessee Valley and Mr. Climate Change himself, is running for President.

While Florida got all the headlines that election, there's a state with 5 Electoral College votes -- exactly Bush's winning EC margin (271 to 266). This state has a Democratic governor, two of its three House reps are Democratic, and both Senators are Democrats -- famously so. It's also a state with a small population -- no city over 60,000 -- so the bang-for-your-buck, media buy wise, is very high.

In 2000, it voted for a Republican for President for the first time in yonks. Members of the Bush campaign referred to the campaign in this state as being a "coal-fired victory."

The state is West Virginia.

Many have commented on the irony of Gore winning the Nobel Peace Prize, almost as a consolation for losing the Presidency.

But it's very possibly more ironic than most realize. And a greater final victory. The very position Gore took that so threatened one specific industry it felt compelled to throw everything it had into a state with a potential margin of defeat... That advocacy has resulted in all the post-election laurels Gore has earned.

Pyrrhus, you have been outdone.

*^*^*^*

EDITED TO ADD: akirlu reminds me:

"The crux of the telling as you told it to me, and miss here, is that the Bush campaign thought they had no chance in West Virginia. They were expecting it to go to Gore, and weren't going to spend any money there. It was the coal industry that spear-headed the spin campaign in West Virginia, and it was a campaign specifically targeted at jobs versus global warming. And the press totally missed it. That's where the real irony lies."

Comments

[bibliotrope.livejournal.com]

Many folks in WV would tell you Gore (and Kerry) lost because the Rs kept telling people that if the radical gun-control Democrats won, they'd take everyone's hunting rifles away. (This despite the candidates actually saying they wouldn't and after 8 years of Clinton *not* doing that.) Hunting is more than a sport to many folks in Appalachia, it's a ritual passed on from father to son. The Monday after Thanksgiving is a school holiday in many places and while it's not often said in public, everyone knows it's because it's the first day of buck season -- using rifles to hunt deer with antlers -- which to many people *is* hunting season. (This is preceded by doe season, which is much shorter and less popular -- no antlers on your trophy -- and archery deer-hunting season, also not as popular.) I was still in school in the 1960s (in Pennsylvania*) when this custom began. We knew then why it was, it was actually explained out loud at the time: On the first day of the season many boys would be "sick", so the addition to the Thanksgiving holiday was created -- the boys could go hunting and still not miss school.

Hunting season, by the way, is also supposed to help keep down the deer population so they don't eat the veggies out of your garden or crash into your car (or v.v. but it's amazing how often the deer hits the car. I'm not joking. They come out of the woods so suddenly). In which case maybe they need more deer season, because there are still an awful lot of deer eating veggies and crashing or being crashed into.

Now it could well be the coal industry (not exactly known for always being 100% truthful) behind the gun-control rumors, at least in part. But the NRA is powerful in the mountains too.

*Jim Carville once said that in Pennsylvania you've got the two big cities, Pittsburgh and Philadelphia, but between them is Alabama. And it's true in many ways: rural Pennsylvania is actually part of Appalachia and is much like other rural areas in attitudes.

[jry.livejournal.com]

Interesting and plausible theory. Makes you want one of Teresa's t-shirts (http://www.cafepress.com/nielsenhayden.10554064).

I'm too lazy to do the research it would take to verify the connection, but I wonder if this: "or switch to low-sulfur coal -- which mostly comes from the western states" might explain the sudden rash of so-called "takings" measures on ballots in western states in recent years. Was that the coal industry trying to soften up the western environmental/legal climate to make the wholesale mining of more of that low-sulfur coal more economical? Hmmm. Good thing those laws have been getting defeated or retrospectively modified (as with Oregon's measure 37) if so.