The recent mining disasters in China and the U.S. reveal the underbelly of the petro-chemical economy, which drives the prosperity of the few at the expense of the many. Coal itself has no conscience. Nor is it necessarily a toxic material. It is a precious natural resource.
Coal mining, still carried on by poor, undereducated men and women from the underclasses at great personal health and safety risk, is currently an industry of profiteering and raping of the planet for financial gain by the owners of the industry. Mine disasters are caused primarily by faulty techniques and poor safety measures, even by the current low-technology standards of the industry. Mine operators try to ignore anything that interrupts profitable production. The miners pay the price with their bodies and their lives.
Coal could be extracted and burned for energy with minimal risk to human life and ecological damage. However, the vast number of consumers, who are just getting by in the uneven economy of most countries, would not bear the price without political protest. And, this political protest may just bring about more justice in elections, justice in the work place and justice in the tax codes. Profits for the exploiters would evaporate. Politicians would no longer get their cut.
West Virginia was one of the locales of the most ardent protests against health care reform. One might say the population deserves what it gets by bowing to the interests and propaganda of the mine owners. However, that population has been deprived of proper education and financial resources for nearly two centuries under the bully rule of the coal industry, aided and abetted by Washington, D.C..
Coal is indeed a fossil fuel, as its production is a fossil of a harsh and unequal age of human exploitation of mankind and the planet.
