My parent are the first generation out of the coal mines in our family. Issues around coal miners are often places i can start conversations.
me to dad:
some friends in WV were talking to me about this:
https://www.crmw.net/updates/appalachian-communities-health-emergency-act-introduced.php
i’m really excited about this bill!
dad to me:
Got a chance to sit and read this. You would think this would be a no-brainer but I fear it will be a tough go. I found this report done by Columbia University. It gives the background and all the reasons why this bill should pass but then it goes into the reasons why it may not. All comes down to money as usual. You know, in Scranton the mine tailings were just dumped in huge piles called culm dumps. These caught fire due to spontaneous combustion and burned for years and years giving off sulphur dioxide like crazy. To some extent people didn’t know (or accept) the danger but when paint is peeling off houses because of the air content, you have to see something is wrong. Anyhow, I hope any rough spots in the bill can be worked out and it is passed with veto proof margins. There was an episode of The Waltons that dealt with this type of mining and its effects. Back then they called it Hydraulic Mining since it used high pressure water jets to blast the dirt off the coal seam. Love you sweetheart and hope you are feeling better. Mom has been keeping me informed about your back. I’m afraid it is my side of the family that has to take credit for back issues..
http://mpaenvironment.ei.columbia.edu/files/2015/01/ACHE-Act-Final-Report_Fall-2014.pdf
Dad
me to dad:
thank you for reading it!! and for researching it!
my question is, why do we accept that it’s about money? why do we allow our system to continue to put money ahead of people? why, when there was sulphur dioxide peeling paint off the houses didn’t the entire community say, hold on. i’m not sure electricity is worth this! we don’t all have to have 24/7 electricity. lots of countries don’t. and especially now that there are so many other ways of providing things that run on electricity – even, you should see the selection of cute solar lamps they have now. you set them outside all day, they run all night. they hold a charge forever, and they even charge if it’s cloudy. some of them float too!
i think that’s really what’s on the table right now: we as a culture are starting to say that we’re not actually willing to accept the damage that is caused, and we’re intent on finding another way to live. just like anything that you look at and say, oh actually that’s not worth the cost to me, i think i won’t buy it – right now we are finally gathering some momentum behind the idea that we don’t want to buy what we’ve been buying for the last however many decades.
i say gathering momentum, because the earliest newspaper clippings i can find about climate change are from 1912, and in the 70s and early 80s there was a strong momentum building, but industry cut that off. why do we accept that? why does this country keep voting to support that? why should we be hoping for a veto-proof majority? why don’t we prioritize cleaning up our mess and caring for one another directly when we vote? what can we do to turn our hopes into something more concrete?
i always think about how you’re so proud of the new scrubbers on the diesel trucks that clean the air before it goes out the exhaust, and you should be! what if we were all voting to put our money towards that kind of work instead of towards more coal tycoons? all those tax cuts simply yielded stock buy-backs, and how long are we all going to say, well, eventually those rich CEOs are going to trickle it down? how long are people going to have to work multiple jobs to keep things together while the ones at the top are doubling and tripling their salaries every year, and polluting our earth while they do it?
oh boy, i’m really on a soapbox here, but honestly, i think these kinds of questions are actually really hopeful. when something isn’t working for me in my business, i have to stop and ask myself, why do i do it this way? is there some other way? and i feel like those questions are a relief because it means that i can do things differently, in a way that works better.
this is why i think things like the Green New Deal are super important – sure, the first round of the legislation is not going to be perfect and isn’t going to be what we actually implement. but it’s amazing that we’re talking about it and getting a discussion going – it’s an invitation to imagine a different way of constructing the way that our society works. it doesn’t have to be the same way it’s always been just because it’s always been that way: we can learn from what has happened and make changes. we can debate the best changes to make and then we need to just try some, and we can continue to adjust – just like how you designed that delivery truck! the trucks that had been used weren’t ideal for the job, so you got into it, you figured out how to design something that would work better, and then your company tried it! it doesn’t mean that all the other trucks they have are bad or wrong, just they weren’t well-suited for a specific job, so you created one that was.
that’s exactly the kind of strategy that we need to be putting into practice in basically every aspect of our society right now. and even if people can’t think of a better way to do things like you did with that truck, at least then listen to other people who have thought of ideas, and really listen to them for a long time before throwing them out, and then let’s say as a country, well hey, maybe that’s worth a try! let’s be willing to try things. we could even pass bills that have sunsets written in, so that people don’t have to be afraid that an experiment that isn’t working will continue forever. there are so many ways to do it!
i hope this bill passes, and i hope even more that it’s not about money, but about doing the right thing for the people who have paid the price for all the electricity we have every day. that’s not going to happen out of the goodness of anyone’s heart though: we have to work for it.
you know, they designated that part of West Virginia a “National Sacrifice Zone”. has their sacrifice been worth it? have we honored their sacrifice with the way we live our lives and the way we use the electricity we bought and are still buying with their suffering? (and when i say “their suffering” i am actually including our own family too, on both sides, because they participated in those sacrifices!) and how can we move forward in a way that honors what they did and takes responsibility for the sacrifices we asked them to make? is there a way we can move forward with fewer sacrifices?
these are the questions they’re trying to solve with the Green New Deal, and i’d love to talk about it more. you have some expertise that i think could be relevant to how we answer some of these questions, and i think it would be really cool to brainstorm together about.
anyway, i guess there’s not much we can do about this bill in WV, but i think it’s important to think about these kinds of things when we vote, and to make sure we’re voting for people who would support this kind of thing.
love you,