Some folks may have noticed I took the blog down last year. Given the site stats, I’m guessing not many did. Site analytics showed that it was averaging one or two visits per week. The same was true with Facebook posts averaging only five or six interactions at most. It appeared, for all intents and purposes, that Thoughts of a Coal Miner was dead.
There are many reasons I’m sure. I wasn’t consistently posting content and the content itself wasn’t great. I’m sure there may have been some quirks with search engines and social media algorithms as well. But I think, perhaps the biggest contributing factor is that interest in Appalachia has waned over the last several years.
Back in the day…
When I began this blog, coal and mountain top removal mining (MTR) were both still a major focus for environmental organizations. Coal was considered the dirtiest fossil fuel, accounted for roughly 35% of electrical generation in the US, and MTR was (and still is) the most environmentally destructive means to extract it.
As environmental organizations focused their energy on coal, Dick Cheney’s Haliburton Loop Hole was having a major impact on the future of the coal industry. By omitting hydraulic fracturing from the Clean Water and Safe Drinking Water Acts, oil companies were free to exploit natural gas reserves all across the US, including Pennsylvania’s Marcellus Shale formation and the Wattenburg Gas Field in the Colorado Basin.
Coal fired power plants were also aging out of service. Power companies were almost happy to shut them down given their expense and increasing concern about fly ash spills following the Kingston Coal Ash disaster in Tennessee. It made more sense to replace them with cheaper, more efficient combined cycle natural gas fired power plants.
So while the Sierra Club’s Beyond Coal campaign declared victory for “shutting down” hundreds of coal fired power plants, it was really the natural gas markets and Sierra Club’s failure to stop the Energy Act of 2005. In other words, they took credit for shutting down coal while hydraulic fracturing was unleashed on communities throughout Pennsylvania, Colorado, Oklahoma, and North Dakota. Good job Sierra Club, good job.
With coal fired plants being shut down, coal markets slumped and companies closed dozens of mines down (many of which were nearing depletion). Coal industry PR departments used it to their advantage, waiting until the day after new environmental regulations were passed to announce mine closures and massive layoffs. It was brilliant from a public relations perspective and worked perfectly. Over the next several years, job scared mining families throughout the nation blamed Democrats and their “liberal environmentalist allies” and we slowly watched mining communities go from voting blue to deep deep red in an effort to save their only source of a living wage.
For environmental activists living outside the region, it was over and done. Victory! Coal fired generation had plummeted. But there were still mines operating, supplying the continuing demand for high-grade metallurgical coal being exported to foreign steel mills. What few coal miners remained were desperate to keep their jobs and are now working longer hours, suffering pay and benefit cuts, and breathing more dust in the process.
Then came Donald Trump stirring up one hell of a media storm supporting the coal industry and drumming up Appalachian coal miner votes. Once again the nation’s curiosity became fixated on Appalachia with a flood of journalists and documentarians rushing in to capitalize on the nation’s morbid curiosities. The new attention even launched J.D. Vance’s political career given the timeliness of his myopic, “Appalachian” memoir Hillbilly Elegy.
With all of the new media attention, the blog regained some of its popularity. I received requests for commentary and articles, including several national publications, syndicated radio shows, and even a book chapter. Not all of it was good however. I provided knowledge and support to other journalists and writers who then capitalized on my knowledge and efforts.
I didn’t take kindly to it because, well, I was trying to write and support my own family. We never did get above federal poverty level during that time. I sure as hell wasn’t the only one either. It happened to many grassroots activists, including friends Chuck Nelson and Maria Gunnoe in West Virginia (featured in The Both of Me).
Media attention on Appalachian coal mining slowly faded once again. Mountain top removal never completely stopped, our streams are still being filled with toxins including chemical byproducts, heavy metals, and acidic mine drainage. Cancer rates are still well above average, and coal miners continue getting injured and contracting black lung with fewer days off each month. And it’s only going to get worse.
Trump’s tariffs on foreign steel are impacting the metallurgical coal markets, which was/is the final life line for Appalachian mining families. In the years it will take to rebuild the US steel industry (through Japanese foreign investment), Appalachian coal markets will collapse yet again.
Just more bad news for miners who are already exploited and overworked by companies who know how desperate they are for decent paying jobs. When coal markets do come back, there will be even fewer environmental regulations and labor rights to protect our communities and miners.
And, as sad as it is to say, we are all facing much bigger problems now. What shred of democracy this country did offer is being actively challenged by a wealthy, egotistical, New York celebrity who enjoys attention and playing boss. And let’s not forget that Canada has been on fire two years in a row, with enough forests burning to cover up the sun in northern states and create haze almost two thousand miles away. These are the climate change feedback loops scientists have been warning us about for decades.
Next Steps…
As for the blog. I’ve taken it down and put it back up twice now. I’ll be honest, my mental health hasn’t been great over the past few years. I became frustrated, cynical, and seriously depressed.
In the process of deleting and reinstating the blog, I’ve lost some of my original posts along with the original .com domain that’s now owned by someone in China. Some of the earlier posts were corrupted and I’ve had to do some patch up work. Others were just lost, and probably for good reason.
I am slowly getting back into writing and would like to build this blog into more than just me sitting here writing about the same old things. I took a .org URL and would like to turn it into a space for coal miners to share their experiences and thoughts. I’ll be getting a submission page together quite soonish. We’ll see how it goes. If you would like to post content, feel free to hit me up on my contact page.
That about wraps it up. I could write chapters on our experiences in just the past five years, regaling you all in all the frustrations and injustices we’ve ran up against in our search for land and a meaningful existence, but I’m sure most everyone has enough on their plates as is. Hang in there everyone.
-Nick