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RFK, Jr., Coal Baron Spar Over Mountaintop Removal, Climate Change
Blankenship, Kennedy Debate Coal's Future
Blankenship said coal has built the nation and must remain strong to protect national security and ensure a high quality of life for Americans.
Environmental lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (right) gestures while sharing a stage Thursday night with Massey Energy chief executive Don Blankenship (left) and University of Charleston President Ed Welch. (photo: Lawrence Pierce) "The mission statement for coal is prosperity for this country," Blankenship told a packed house at the University of Charleston. "This industry is what made this country great and if we forget that, we're going to have to learn to speak Chinese."
But Kennedy argued giant mining machines have cost thousands of miners their jobs at the same time that mountaintop removal has been destroying ancient peaks, burying and otherwise polluting pristine streams and eliminating once-vital rural communities.
"This is the worst environmental crime that has ever happened in our history," Kennedy said. "These companies are liquidating this state for cash with these gigantic machines."
Blankenship, the coal industry's most outspoken executive, and Kennedy, the passionate son of the late U.S. Sen. Robert F. Kennedy, squared off in what organizers billed as a "Forum on the Future of Energy."
The University of Charleston hosted the event and the school's president, Ed Welch, moderated the 90-minute discussion. A capacity crowd filled a nearly 1,000-seat auditorium and overflowed into a nearby gymnasium to watch on giant video screens. It was televised and broadcast via radio statewide and on the Internet around the world.
Coal industry supporters scheduled a "Stand up for Jobs Rally" before the debate, but it appeared disorganized and a cold, heavy rain may have reduced any enthusiasm for it. Across town earlier in the day, environmental activists hung a large anti-mountaintop removal banner on the South Side Bridge in downtown Charleston.
A significant contingent of regional, national and even international media attended, drawn by the star power of the Kennedy name and Blankenship's reputation for bluntly defending the coal industry.
Blankenship has argued that global warming is a fraud or "Ponzi scheme," and complained that out-of-state environmental "extremists" are wrongly trying to shut down mountaintop removal mining. Kennedy has said Blankenship's company is a "criminal enterprise" that destroys mountains, pollutes streams and endangers the safety of its workers.
Welch had said prior to the event that he hoped to push Kennedy and Blankenship to get beyond sound bites and actually discuss coal and energy issues with him.
"We don't do a very good job in our society of having reasonable arguments or discussions of important issues," Welch said Thursday morning on the MetroNews radio show "Talkline." "I'm going to push the participants to go beyond the sound bites and really respond to each other, and see if we can find some common ground."
And Blankenship and Kennedy indeed did engage directly a few times, most notably when Kennedy rattled off a list of Massey's continued Clean Water Act violations -- thousands of them in a recent year -- and asked the coal executive if mountaintop removal could be done without violating the law.
Blankenship held up a plastic bottle he said contained runoff from a mine site. He said it was clean, and that the real water pollution issue in Appalachia is raw sewage continuing to be dumped into streams.
Also, Blankenship said Massey has "greatly reduced the violation numbers," and that Massey is "doing everything we can to comply with the law every day."
But Kennedy noted Massey's own data, submitted to federal regulators, indicated an increase in violation frequency since a record $20 million Clean Water Act settlement two years ago. And, Kennedy told Blankenship he hadn't answered the original question of whether mountaintop removal could be done without violating the law.
Blankenship responded, "I don't think that it's possible without a single violation, but if anybody can do it, this industry in West Virginia can do it."
Thursday's discussion occurred against the background of declining coal production in Central Appalachia, and projections that the region's coal output might drop by half before the end of this decade -- even without any new greenhouse gas emissions limits or restrictions on mountaintop removal coal mining.
Industry officials and regional business leaders, along with coalfield politicians, have blasted the Obama administration for conducting a "war on coal," with efforts to pass climate change legislation and more closely scrutinize strip-mining permits.
Several times during the event, Kennedy cited the recent statement by Sen. Robert D. Byrd, D-W.Va., urging the coal industry to "embrace the future" and chiding environmentalists for being unrealistic in thinking the nation could simply stop all coal production.
"We're not going to get rid of all mining in this state, and I'm not advocating that," Kennedy said. "[But] the state needs to start diversifying and transitioning to a new energy economy."
Blankenship responded that West Virginia's laws are too difficult to comply with and its legal climate too harsh on businesses. And, he said those who attack the coal industry are attacking their neighbors who work in the industry -- "the people who are teaching your Sunday schools and coaching your Little League."
But Kennedy said coal operators are only able to compete in the world energy market by shifting onto society the costs of the pollution, workplace safety and climate change impacts of their product.
"All of these costs are imposed on the rest of us," Kennedy said. "We should have free markets with no subsidies. If we did that, there is no way your industry could compete."
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25 Comments so far
Show All"Blankenship responded that West Virginia's laws are too difficult to comply with and its legal climate too harsh on businesses."
ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, - shit.
I recently became involved quite unexpectedly in the new natural gas development going on in West Virginia (I'm a Professional Land Surveyor) and I can tell you that all the politicicos of that state can't move fast enough to give any and all industry everything industry wants. West Virginia is a poor state and this is mainly the reason why Blankenship hasn't yet been tarred and feathered or lynched.
No, we can't just all of a sudden quit mining and burning coal ,though we will have to eventually. What has hapened in West Virginia and I believe in Kentucky is a result of gutting the Surface Mine Reclamation Act. That legislation was a result of the very same abuses that Blankenship et al condone and embrace.
Revive and enforce the intent, authority, and provisions of the Surface Mine Reclamation Act and we will not need even the "Tax and Cap" proposal. Complying with the common sense provisions of the Reclamation Act will kill mountaintopping in its current form and will raise the cost of coal generated electricity to levels that will spur more development and implementation of alternative methods of electricy generation.
It was hilarious to hear that scumbag Blankenship refer to China. His company, Massey Coal had a contract to supply metalurgical coal to Koppers/Wheeling-Pitt Steel to supply a local coke plant here. He failed to deliver the coal under the terms of that contract because the coal he extracted from West Virginia he decided to sell to China for a higher price.
What a patriot. With the continued efforts of environmentalists fighting Massey and others we are constantly subject to Massey's TV comercials here telling us that environmentalists are commie bastards and they- Massey and Company- are true patriots complete with images of some old fart saluting and an American flag waving behind him.
Blankenship is the poster child of corporate amorality, greed, and environmental destruction. Sarumon (if he were real) reincarnated.
Hey, hey, RFK: BLANK en Ship with this EXISTING FEDERAL LAW, the Clean Water Act - >> FEDERALWATERPOLLUTIONCONTROLACT
>> (33 U.S.C. 1251 et seq.)
>> AN ACT To provide for water pollution control activities in the
>> Public Health Serv-
>> ice of the Federal Security Agency and in the Federal Works
>Agency,
>> and for
>> other purposes.
>> Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the
>> United States of America in Congress assembled,
>> TITLE I—RESEARCH AND RELATED PROGRAMS
>> DECLARATIONOFGOALSANDPOLICY
>> SEC. 101. (a) The objective of this Act is to restore and main-
>> tain the chemical, physical, and biological integrity of the
>> Nation’s
>> waters. In order to achieve this objective it is hereby declared
>> that,
>> consistent with the provisions of this Act—
>> (1) it is the national goal that the discharge of pollutants
>> into the navigable waters be eliminated by 1985.
That was to be E.L.I.M.I.N.A.T.E.D.! NLT 1.9.8.5.!!
Lets start prodding these corporations that are competing in our society for business to take on the real competition.
"We should have free markets with no subsidies. If we did that, there is no way your industry could compete."
The truth is just that. Corporations are all woosies. They don't want real competition it may hurt their business model.
I believe Corporations have harder time with change than people.
Been there, done that.
You have cause and effect reversed. Any government favoratism toward corporations only reflects it's obsequience to corporate power, which was gained as a natural consequence of capitalism operating under free-market relations with labor and the earth's resources.
This recent revisionist-libertarian story that the rise of malevolant corporate power is governemnt's fault is just rhetoric that thinly covers the actual libertarian agenda of abolishing all environmental, labor and consumer laws.
It is pretty frightening that the supposed "progressive" RFK Jr. has bought into this. He is a liberal all right - in the classic economic sense!
At any rate, with regard to coal, any direct or indirect subidies (govt. safety research and tech. transfer, the depletion allowance), does not favor large corporations any more than small ones. Massey (and #2 IGC) acquired practically monopoly control of WV's coal not becasue of anything govenment did, but simply because of the law of the capitalist jungle - an incremental increase in power gave it the power to acquire more power - buy smaller mines and bust their unions, and achieve economies of scale. With that power, they could then cow the WVDEP, OSM, USACE and EPA into approving surface mining schemes through political pressure.
It is true that environmental and safety regulation, in any industry, does have the undesirable side effect of benefitting large corporations, simply becausue small businesses have trouble affording the engineering work needed for the permit applications or to ducument regulatory compliance. But to argue that this means we should do away with regulations altogether is ridiculous. Obviously, the answer is govermnment asistance with regulatory compliance for businesses below a certain size - and simplifying and using more plain language in the paperwork process.
In fact, I would argue that phony liberals like the Kennedys, Bernie Sanders, Barney Frank, etc. are the primary reason that megacorporations are able to maintain so much power in this country. If these people weren't out there constantly pushing government deals and bailouts, most of these companies would naturally go out of business due to their own poor management.
A few of the large banks would go out of business, then their assets would simply get consolidated in a single far larger banking corporation... but the would have been a second great depression first.
Most huge monopolistic corporations receive no government money, that has not stopped from growing. Your analysis is idiotic.
pjd your conclusions about the state of affairs comes very close to mine. Some who regularly post here can see only an elite conspiracy that was and always is waiting just to destroy all of the rest of us.
wrt fossil fuels most of humanity high and low embraced them wholeheartedly for the simple reason that they were cheap, abundant, and pack more energy per ton or gallon than any other fuels previously known. And these fuels made possible many, many true advances for human beings that only the most sullen dispirited post-modernist or post-industrialist dreamers deny.
imho once humanity realized the potential of fossil fuels it was inevitable that we should have traveled the course that we have and find ourselves in this precarious here and now. I believe that many Americans did not protest the invasion of Iraq not because they are stupid but because they are fully aware that we long ago depleted the significant reserves that were here and without Middle Eastern oil we would collapse, and yes they did understand that it really was and is about the oil. And GW knew we understood.
If there is a conspiracy, then it is a conspiracy of life. Once Europeans discovered this continent and populated it then the arc of history made it, if not inevitable, then highly likely that this nation would become what it has, warts and all.
>>>Justaman: Once Europeans discovered this continent and populated it then the arc of history made it, if not inevitable, then highly likely that this nation would become what it has, warts and all.
It's high time to stop calling the Europeans landing in the Americas as "discovery" - it's more like a stumbling on to a big landmass at first, then a mad rush driven by greed. Please stop using words such as "populated it", implying that these continents were somehow empty and there were not many human beings. PLEASE read books such as "Stolen Continents" by Ronald Wright (even though he conveniently downplays the brutalities of the English, while going into some great detail of the violent, almost inhuman, approach of the Spanish). The only thing inevitable about this whole thing is that, having made the voyage across the ocean driven by greed and fear of one's neighbor gaining an advantage, and making the initial conquest using extreme violence, whatever else that followed was also to be driven mostly by greed and violence right down to the present day. Except this time around, the victims of this greed and violence could be anyone - of any color,nationality and race.
I knew as soon as I typed that comment that someone would respond as you did Alcyon. Nowhere did I imply that this continent was not already populated when Europeans "discovered" it. This is the kind of nit-picking shit that made me abandon this "progressive" forum years ago.
Your righteous indignation does nothing to refute what I posted. Yes, the deeds of the white man on this continent are despicable and murderous - genocidal - and quite in keeping with much of the rest of history whether it concerns whites, blacks, yellows or whatever.
edit: what I meant to say was "holier than thou nitpicking shit."
Justaman, point taken :)
I just finished reading "Stolen Continents" a few weeks ago - so it's still kinda fresh on my mind. You did mention the reason for people not protesting against the Iraqi invasion enough.
Another reason is that I've been thinking real hard about this part of history - not with the idea of blaming, or to sound holier-than-thou, but because it's at the root of several problems. It's the suddenly increased availability of resources in the "New World" that gave rise to a wasteful lifestyle - a lifestyle that was only available to aristocrats in the "Old World".
So anyway, like I said, point taken.
>>>toophat wrote: The truth is just that. Corporations are all woosies. They don't want real competition it may hurt their business model.
So true, toophat. It's so easy to call the bluff of the so-called free-marketers who try everything possible to avoid real competition. Their approach? Exploitation, yes, but competition, no. The US auto industry enjoyed all kinds of tax loopholes for themselves and tariffs against imports in the case of trucks and SUVs for several years - the same years when the Japanese and Korean companies were improving their technologies in cars, but the US companies were happy to rake in their profits from their trucks and SUVs. In the case of health insurance, public option is opposed by the insurance industry simply out of fear of competition. The only way some of these corporations can survive is by operating in a monopoly or a duopoly kind of situation, through forming industry-wide cartels, by keeping out competition, by exploiting third world country workers, by drawing heavy tax payer-supported subsidies (by citing jobs) and by making use of the US military might (again paid with tax dollars) to corner resources in other countries. The amazing thing is that they do all this, and still have the temerity to talk about free market and competition and shout "socialism" whenever some progressive policy is discussed, and there are enough people who actually believe their crap.
"The mission statement for coal is prosperity for this country," Blankenship told a packed house at the University of Charleston. "This industry is what made this country great..."
Yeah, heard that before:
"what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa" - GM President Wilson, 1953
"The business of America is Business" - Calvin Coolidge 1920's
The business of America is business, not town meetings or airy rhetoric. That which stands in its way is quickly shunted aside...
Commenter Rick Whittington, Forbes Magazine, Aug 25, 2009
the coal industry must be thinking "thank god for scotus."
West Virginia's state slogan used to be "Almost Heaven" then they changed it to "Wild And Wonderful" and most recently they changed it to "Open For Business."
I didn't make that up, it's true.
Blankenship maintains, and I paraphrase something I heard him say some years back: "Environmental destruction is the necessary cost of affordable energy."
No sir, it is not.
Environmental responsibility is the necessary and just cost of doing business. With the Clean Air Act, The Clean Water Act, and the Surface Mine Reclamation Act this country moved in the direction of affirming that truth.
The provisions of those Acts applied to all and leveled the playing field but it also raised that playing field above the underdeveloped and just developing world and so our great patriot industrialists moved their operations to those places where it was embraced that-
Environmental destruction is the necessary cost of producing cheap crap and affordable energy.
Yup.
I pass under the big signs on I-79 at the Mason-Dixon line, or I-77 emerging from the E. River Mt. Tunnel fairly frequently. Superimposed over a photo of the rugged forested coal-country landscape - with some contour-strip scars visible, is "West Virginia - Open for Business".
As far as "affordable energy", I would be happy to pay higher electric bill for a cleaner environment - and I do, by buying generation offset-shares for wind energy development from Iberdrola/Community Energy.
Just like SUV usage, most US households waste vast amounts of electricity simply becasue they can - as if it is a statment of patriotism or something. Air conditioning is unnesesary in my area. (average July daily high 81F, days per year reaching 90F - two), yet most homes run it nonstop in the summer months.
good point about air conditioning, sounds like we share the same environs. My little Focus has AC but I never need it and it is only run when I'm not the driver. I'm rebuilding (salvaging and re-using) my existing house into a passive solar structure and am not installing any active AC using electricity.
how's this for a strategy proposal: find out which utilities that Massey Energy sells its energy to, and target those companies with exposure and bad press, while running ads in those regions that would encourage consumers and businesses to pressure their public utility districts to change who they get their energy from, or provide for an option to consume "green" or renewable energy.
For this to be effective, it would be all about how the message is crafted. If you dry up the demand, you dry up the market for that kind of energy.
Where I live in the Upper Ohio Valley we mine coal and make electricity and steel. That approach, no matter how you craft it, will not work here. But we all still have to live here and breath the air, drink the water, and live with with the destruction of surface mining. The degradation and pollution are not swallowed whole even by those that mine the coal and work in the plants and are aware that Blankenship and others are giving us a false choice.
Did I just suggest how you may be correct? son of a gun.
I watched the debate and found it very interesting. I had been looking forward to seeing it and I was not disappointed.
I thought both men were passionate about what they believed. Both had the courage to debate each other. The issues talked about were very important to not only West Virginia but to all of us in this country.
I hope that there will be more debates in the future because it is by talking that maybe we can get Mr. Blankenship and others to realize the truth of the impact they are having on the communities of West Virginia and the rest of us. I got the impression that Mr. Blankenship doesn't see the impact because he doesn't want to see it. Like many men who have power they forget what the little guy is going through. Maybe by taking the time to talk to him and trying to get him to understand the effects of Mountaintop Removal Mining truly are that he would stop it on his own. One can only hope that he would seek to do the right thing.
I know Pollyanna always hoping that the best will happen and always hoping that all people will truly want to do the right thing.
Chrisy
The right thing in my opinion Chrissy is to restore and enforce the regulations that I mentioned. wrt to the Surface Mine Act, I don't know all the political machinations that resulted in negating substantially at every part the intent and the responsibility that was legislated there, but the negation is complete. Probably done through the low-profile and lobbyist influenced periodic "legislative review" process.
These articles about Coal Company behavior appear on CD with depressing regularity.
Everybody talks about how bad it is, but nobody does anything that produces results.
The only way to put a stop their behavior is to develop a renewable technology for electricity production that will make coal mining and burning obsolete because it will be far cheaper, with way less environmental impact.
Build the power plants in Appalachia on (already) affected mountains for local consumption and power export, which will create jobs for the people. The AVE technology has far less "visual blight" than huge windmills.
Support Plan B = vortexengine.ca = AVE
NASA vortex scientist agrees the "science is solid".
"Blankenship said coal has built the nation and must remain strong to protect national security and ensure a high quality of life for Americans"
It is true that fossil energy has fueled progress that matters, such as medical research and other processes/products that truly serve our real needs, including security. But that's only a half-truth, the classic elite message. The other half of the truth, the classic populist message, is truly hideous and also truly amazing:
Elitevil use fossil energy and other tools of social oppression in zero-sum global competition among themselves to expand their domains of social oppression. This global competition is of course absolutely illegitimate. That the elitevil fail to reign themselves in renders their arguments moot and their rights defunct. Regarding fossil fuels, the volume of benefit compared to the volume of liability is poor. If the benefits outweighed the liability by a factor of four, the liability would still be too huge. We simply don't need the liability, because the alternative energy sources and proper conversion come with almost zero liability.
Beyond competing with each other on a global scale, plundering and destroying natural and human resources in the process, fossil/capital-driven elitevil commit further atrocities against the people captive in their "home domains". They try relentlessly to "grow or develop markets" by manipulating the people, to addict them to various fossil/material opiates, luxuries/conveniences, kaka the people don't need and have no idea of the price when it comes time to pay the piper. Like in the past decade when USans payed through a catastrophic transfer of wealth from the working and middle classes to the top ten and especially the top one percent. Not to mention the great loss of civic institutions such as the rule of law, due process/habeas corpus, privacy rights, the efficiencies of the public-sector economy, fiscal justice, and general representation in Washing-town. Poof. Up in smoke. Along with the sulfurous oxides, arsenic, chromium, etc.
The amazing part of the populist message is the progress we'll achieve when we banish elitevil and put the economy in service to the people, instead. For economic benefit, the people will be far better off when the people choose the energy sources and conversion methods, zero-carbon, clean, renewable and locally owned of course, and choose the appropriate percent of their incomes to spend on energy, and everything else, with full costs known to all.
Big coal has been at the epicenter of exploiting (robbing) natural resources and people's lives from the get go. As we progress, one technology has enabled the development of another, and it is now time to put the monster to rest.
>>"The mission statement for coal is prosperity for this country," Blankenship told a packed house at the University of Charleston. "This industry is what made this country great and if we forget that, we're going to have to learn to speak Chinese
What a stupid statement. I guess the more Coal I burn the better my English will get. Wait...I dont burn Coal. Canada gets 62 percent of its power from Hydro. Oh my God..I can FEEL the Chinese words bubbling up inside me just BURSTING to get out!!!
Time to order some take out Chinese. Are they ever going to be impressed when I order in Mandarin!