One variable that we have observed in this course is that people’s concerns for
ID: 91589 • Letter: O
Question
One variable that we have observed in this course is that people’s concerns for the future are relative to their own social and economic security. A secure middle-class can afford to protect their grand-children’s interests, while economically insecure people are largely preoccupied with their own day-to-day survival. At least one economist has noted that because the interests of business are always short-term, they are better served by an economically insecure population which has a similar focus. In effect, the best way to avoid environmental restrictions is to keep people economically insecure. The classic example of this is the practice of mountaintop-removal mining in the Appalachian Mountains of the American southeast. The United States has the highest levels of poverty of any industrialized nation, by far. It also affords business interests an unprecedented degree of participation in our political system. If their interests are best served by an economically insecure population, they would have a legal responsibility to their owners (or stockholders) to work toward perpetuating those conditions. If your goal is to convince people to let you do mountaintop-removal mining, you want people just as poor and as desperate as they can be. You invest your money in political representatives who’s actions (or lack thereof) will complement your interests. Give your thoughts on this arrangement. If you find it lacking in some respect (e.g. ethics, morality), suggest a remedy for this conflict.
Explanation / Answer
Mountaintop removal coal mining, often described as "strip mining on steroids," is an extremely destructive form of mining that is devastating Appalachia.
Coal companies first raze an entire mountainside, ripping trees from the ground and clearing brush with huge tractors. This debris is then set ablaze as deep holes are dug for explosives.
An explosive is poured into these holes and mountaintops are literally blown apart. Huge machines called draglines—some the size of an entire city block, able to scoop up to 100 tons in a single load—push rock and dirt into nearby streams and valleys, forever burying waterways.
Coal companies use explosives to blast as much as 800 to 1,000 feet off the tops of mountains in order to reach thin coal seams buried deep below.
Mountaintop removal mining is designed specifically to remove the miner from the process, replacing manpower with machinery, and lowering the coal companies’ overhead cost. Coal mining employs fewer people today than it did at the turn of the 19th century. West Virginia, which once employed over 130,000 coal miners, now has a coal mining workforce of about 20,000 miners. Declining coal production and productivity in central Appalachia ensures that this downward trend will continue.
Mountaintop removal not only whittles away underground mining jobs, it also creates enormous barriers to economic development and diversification, by making the area less attractive for other industries, due to the pollution of the land, air and water. Coal mining communities in Appalachia shower higher rates of economic distress in proportion to the amount of mining that occurs there and significantly more than in non-coal mining communities.
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