People keep asking me, “How do we convince coal miners we need change?” My answers vary from week to week and I do not pretend to be an “expert” on the subject. What I know has come from my own experiences and observations of the many social, economical, and cultural issues impeding change within the hearts of most coal miners.
From the outside it’s easy to realize the need for change. Outsiders, and even the “outsiders” who have lived in the mountains all their life, see plainly what’s going on. They understand the various toxins building up in the streams. They see the increase in flooding from hard packed surface mine reclamation and mountain top removal, a result of a devastated hydrology where once forested mountains, streams, and aquifers regulated water flow. They know of the toxicity in slurry impoundments, in coal ash at power plants, and they know it is being released into the atmosphere from burning god-aweful amounts of coal. They see the higher poverty rates, drug abuse, lack of education, cancer rates and birth defects within coal producing counties. They even witness the coal industry’s frightening influences within our legal and political system each and every time they attempt speak with someone in Washington or their state capitols.
For those of us capable of seeing the bigger picture it is easy to see why change must come, and what the future holds if we allow coal companies to continue strip mining in Appalachia. So why in God’s name can’t coal miners see it?
They can’t.
If coal miners did see the big picture like some of us do, they’d have to admit their jobs are hurting people. They could never have pride knowing their work is causing breathing issues in children living near a coal haul routes, prep plants, train tracks, and power plants.
Instead people within the coal industry want to believe that people are alive and thriving because their job supplies the coal that generates electricity for hospitals. They feel their job is the only thing keeping people alive in the cold depths of winter or supplying the comforts of air conditioning during increasingly hotter summers. Appalachian coal miners want people to think all their coal goes to making electricity and other peoples lives better. Few really stop to think that the majority of coal they produce is often metallurgical coal used to make steel in foreign industries like China, India, and Europe.
It’s so much easier to believe what they are doing isn’t hurting anyone. There’s no risk involved to their paycheck, there’s no reason to feel bad that people are losing their health and homes because of coal. It just doesn’t happen in their minds, especially when they are being fed a false narrative from their employers.
Remember, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.” as Upton Sinclair state in 1932.
It’s easier to go on working believing that all of the statistics, pesky toxicity reports, and health impact studies are all just hype from a bunch of dumb, lazy, hippy tree huggers who have nothing better to do than to shut down coal mines and save trees. Many miners hate a treehuggers and, believe you me, some of them even love hating treehuggers. That’s why some have no shame putting up bumper stickers saying “Save a coal miner, shoot a treehugger.” It’s just easier to denounce the facts when you hate the people trying to give them to you.
Some coal miners do realize what is happening. They do realize the terrible injustices occurring within the coalfields on every level from economics and the environment, to political and social. They are few though, very few. These are the men who often feel “trapped” with little option as they see it. Few industries can use a coal miner’s skills. It would be like starting over again if they were to leave the mountains.
A few may have such a deep love for their family and their mountain home that they can’t bare the thought of leaving. Others may have just given up on seeing a better future ahead of themselves and accepted their situation. All of their hearts are in the right place, but they just can’t break free from their own bonds. They believe as I once did, coal mining is the best and only way. There is no other way. There is still hope though.
So, how do you convince a coal miner to change? Well, if Upton Sinclair is right, and I think we’ve done a pretty good job explaining that he is (if you need more, read my post ) no amount of preaching will turn coal miners from what they have to believe to survive Appalachia’s coal extraction mono-economy. We need to provide coal miners and their families a better way of living that doesn’t require them to destroy their bodies and the health of their communities. If you know anything about our Appalachian history and the economic and political power coal companies hold over our region, you’ll know that there is no easy fix.