I recently read Jeff Goodell's Big Coal and I'm in the middle of an email interview with him for a piece to run in August. But this article in the NYT shares a lot of what Goodell had to say in his book. I knew very little about the impact of coal mining on my life when I read Goodell's book (and also Erik Reece's Lost Mountain). I honestly had no idea how electricity got to my house or how coal was involved in its production. The book has been a revelation that way - a horrible, terrible revelation. And I'm even more confused today than ever before about just why so many people in positions of power seem to care so little about the environment. I don't understand the shortsightedness and smallmindedness of industrial leaders - and I hope after the guys from Enron get sent away for a good long time that maybe a few of them will wake up to the fact that white collar crime can get your ass in jail just as if you robbed a liquor store.
Although I have little hope that the men who run the coal industry and the elected officials who happily take their campaign contributions and let them poison us will get that message.
Still, it is good to see a big story about the environmental impact of coal mining - whether it's a story about China or the US. Coal is the same here and there and we are long overdue for getting bombarded by the message that it is not cheap and it is not healthy and it needs to be replaced.
