A call for Jimmy Carter to visit Appalachia

by: Clem Guttata

Mon Jul 20, 2009 at 05:38:12 AM EDT

Jeff Biggers thinks so: Jimmy Carter's Next Urgent Mission: Polarized Appalachian Coalfields

In the end, despite his clean energy and green jobs initiatives for the rest of the country, President Barack Obama's recent decision to "regulate" and not abolish mountaintop removal operations will trap Appalachia in a 20th century muck of economic development.

And this is where Jimmy Carter must use his moral authority to get Obama to get right with history.

In the spring of 1977, President Carter addressed the American people in a televised speech on his proposed energy policy and his creation of the Department of Energy: "We must look back in history to understand our energy problem."

On August 3rd, 1977, surrounded in the White House Rose Garden by coalfield residents and environmentalists who had waged a ten-year campaign to abolish strip-mining, President Carter begrudgingly signed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act as an act of political compromise. "In many ways," he told his guests at the signing, "this has been a disappointing effort." Calling it a "watered down" bill, Carter added, "I'm not completely satisfied with the legislation. I would prefer to have a stricter strip mining bill."

"The President's other main objection to the bill," wrote the New York Times, "is that it allows the mining companies to cut off the tops of Appalachian mountains to reach entire seams of coal."

Three decades later, President Carter's worst fears have been realized. And it has not happened by accident, but the blatant manipulation of federal regulations.

What would a visit look like? Here's his suggestion:

"I am not here as a public official," Carter said in his Nobel lecture in 2002, "but as a citizen of a troubled world who finds hope in a growing consensus that the generally accepted goals of society are peace, freedom, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering, and the rule of law."

In the name of peace, human rights, environmental quality, the alleviation of suffering, and the rule of law, coalfield residents desperately need Carter to make a visit to a mountaintop removal site and intervene as a special emissary to bring an end to the crime of mountaintop removal and draw up a roadmap for economic revival through green jobs and clean energy initiatives.

August 3rd, the anniversary of the Surface Mining Act, would be a good day to announce his first visit.

Carter helped negotiate an enduring peace along the Israel - Egypt border. We could use some of that magic for a lasting peace in mountains and hollers of West Virginia.