We're a poor energy state

by: Carnacki

Thu Jun 25, 2009 at 09:17:30 AM EDT

West Virginia Chamber of Commerce President Steve Roberts has opined to your readers that "We must decide, collectively, whether West Virginia is going to be an energy state, or a poor state." Mr. Roberts, being a cheerleader for the coal industry that is destroying West Virginia and the rest of Appalachia, presents a duplicitous choice.

West Virginia is already both "an energy state" and "a poor state." It is our status as an "energy state" that leads inexorably to us being a "poor state." That's why our poorest counties are the ones with the greatest amount of mountain removal coal extraction. West Virginia's descent into grinding poverty began on the first day that the first pick hit the first seam of coal, and we've been slaves to it ever since. Many West Virginians of African-American descent have ancestors who were literally used as slave labor for the fledgling coal industry in Appalachia. Those of us of Caucasian stock have ancestors who weren't even paid in American money for their work. We still have some scrip around to remind us of those days of indentured servitude to the coal companies, privation, terror, Baldwin-Felts thugs, black-listing and cold-blooded murder-for-hire.

Mr. Roberts is either ignorant of our history or he is deliberately spreading falsehoods. The former is pitiful. The latter is a mortal sin.

West Virginia's real choice is this: continue to be a poor state and an energy state in the thrall of coal companies that will sooner or later leave us high and dry, or start working toward weaning ourselves off coal, save what's left of our mountain heritage and build a real, 21st century economy based on the endless, boundless energy of the sun and wind that will bring good jobs for generations of West Virginians to come. As the old song goes, "Which side are you on," Mr. Roberts? "Which side are you on?" I think he's already told us.

Bob Kincaid

Victor, W.Va.