The last year or so has been a great year for the mining interests, and it's easy to see why. One of the most powerful Senators in the U.S. Senate is Republican Senate Majority Whip Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, who is, like most Republicans, friendly to business interests. Additionally, McConnell happens to be married to Ms. Elaine Chaou, who is the Secretary of Labor in the administration of George W. Bush. And she is, like most Republicans, friendly to business interests.
Unfortunately, while it has been a great year for the mining interests, it has not been that great a year for the miners they employ. Not only was the recent disaster in West Virginia which claimed the lives of twelve miners out of thirteen testament to that, but on the heels of this tragedy, and all but ignored, was the recent colapse of a mine in Pike County, just outside of Pikeville, that claimed the life of a miner.
Of course, the point can be made that mining safety has vastly improved. The mining interests would claim this to be the result of improved technology,which is true, but it is also true that it is due to years of oversight by labor interests, who had to fight tooth and nail to achieve influence. In fact, it took an appreciable amount of bloodshed, as a perusal of the history of mining and mining unions in Kentucky and elsewhere will quickly attest.
There has also been a coal boom,so miners have a degree of job security over and above that of most industries, for now. Yet, the fact that so many mines are operating in the face of flagrant violations, which are seemingly being ignored in some cases, is certainly troubling. But it is a sad reality that as long as politicans give the industry pass, the majorityof the people will, when the alternative would obviously be higher energy costs.
Environmental impact is another aspect of the mining industry that is disconcerting. The most obvious example of this would be the Martin County coal spill earlier in the year, which sent tons of coal waste from a sludge pond breaking it's boundaries and spilling over into the drinking water of the county, a disaster of such proportions it took months to litigate. It was finally settled, after months of wrangling, but this was strangely underreported by the suppossed "liberal media".
But more than this singular incident, flagrant and staggering though it was, is the ongoing ressurrection of the process of strip mining, which seems to be about to once more commence, despite federal law that was passed decades earlier to put an end to it, or at the least to minimize it's negative impact on the environment. According to federal law, whenever stirp mining occurs, it is to be followed by land restoration, a mandate by which the original contours of the land is to be restored to as great an extent as possible.
Now personally, I have my doubts as to the degree with which this federal law was enforced to begin with. The phrase "to as great an extent as possible", if that is he way th federal law is actually worded, seems to me to leave some wiggle room. Andif that weren't bad enough, somebody seems to have found another littel known exception to the federal law-it can be disregarded in the event of need for community expansion.
And so the race is on. Pikeville will be just the begining, and I see no end in sight. Add to all this the increasing influence of the Republican party in the state legislature,the governorship of the state of Kentukcy being held by a Republican, all but a few of Kentucky's Congresional delegation being Republican, both Senators being conservative Republicans, and one of these married to a Secretary Of Labor who is more a shill for business inteests than she is an advocate for labor interests, and it all adds up to cause for alarm. And it is not even an anti-business stance on my part, it is simply a concern for the lack of balance and perspective that accompanies one party domination over state politics. Were the oppossite party in power, I know from experience there would be equal cause for alarm from the other extreme viewpoint.
One bright spot, and this is a fairly recent development, is the recent pro-environmental stance adopted by certain branches of evangelical Christianity. Frankly, I don't think there was any magnificent plan involved in the creation of the Kentucky mountains, or any other aspect of creation. In fact, I don'teven likethe word "creation", I find preferable the word "formation", as it is far more accurrate a portrayal of what actually happenned.
At one point in the geological history of Kentucky, it was struck by a meteor, which landed exactly on the spot of the present day town of Middlesboro. The impact crater can be seen to this day. This meteor strike possibly played a significnt role in the formation of the mountains of Kentucky,and possibly beyond, and Cumberland Gap as well. The coal that lay within the mountains is probably the result of this impact as well. A lot of the flora and vegetation of the day was doubtless killed, and buried, and formed into coal as a result of the tremendous heat nd pressure it overwent for a significant though unknown, to me, period of time.
I would imagine that most Christians would view this event as a divine act of God in the formation of this world, and understandbly,they would want to treat God's creation with the respect it deserves. Personally, while I do not subscribe to the theory of a divinely directed or intellient creation, I do consider the prospect magical, and even divine, in the sense that the energies that formed the gods, and all the universe, can be seen here at work, and cetainly can sense the work of nature in enabling the strengthening and the adapttion of life to this set of circumstancs.
However you choose to view it, it should be obvious that nature should be respected, and any changes in the environment should be approached with caution and due dilligence, and not undertaken lightly or haphazardly. Unfortunately, too many people don't seem to understand this, and out of those that do, a significant number of them don't seem to really care. While out and about on my forays into town I got to know a girl at the local jail, a prisoneron work release. She was from Bell County, in fact she was from Middlesboro. When I mentioned something about the impact crater her town was buildt within, she gave me this curious look. "No, I didn't know that", she said.
One of the last times I saw this girl was on an upper floor of the County Court House, where a male work release prisoners was engaged in trying to drag her into the men's bathroom. All ofwhich seems symptomatic of the human condition. Life goes on all arond us, and we make our way through it, oft times unaware. But it goes on, nevertheless.
