5 Responses to “Coal”

1. 

   Jason Riedy August 5th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

   Don’t discount the fight against them outsiders “what got us into this mess in the first place.” With that and the fact that few jobs is more than no jobs, it’s one seriously tough sell. I expect this will be a losing battle until some other industries appear, and that explains part of the gold/coal rush while the economy’s down.

   I know folks who hate removal but think they have *no* choice but to support it. And right now I can’t see options for them (30+ years working only in coal, little tobacco on the side). Low-level tech jobs are one, but the companies of useful scale are not expanding or investing right now, and it’d take a few years to make an impact. Shipping Appalachian crafts is a nice supplement for a few folks.

   It’s horrible all the way around. Living in SW VA for a bit was a real eye opener.

   (Also ignore the irony about “outsiders” controlling the anti-outsider aspect. sigh.)

2. 

   sherry August 5th, 2009 at 3:56 pm

   Good points, Jason. It’s a complicated problem and I don’t want to oversimplify it. I really am trying to get away from the black and white mindset. And anyway, I’m more poet than economist or poliltical activist.

   But I think people should be aware of what’s going on and the price some folks pay for our easy access to electrical energy.

   You have worked 30+ years in coal?

3. 

   sherry August 5th, 2009 at 3:58 pm

   Oh — I should point out, Jason, that my family were tobacco farmers for generations and some are tobacco farmers still. Wendell Berry was a tobacco farmer. It was once considered an honorable thing to be.

4. 

   Jason Riedy August 5th, 2009 at 10:05 pm

   Me? No, I’m a Florida suburb kid. It’s the people finding themselves having to support something they find horribly distasteful because that’s the only job path they know.

   And I have nothing really against tobacco farmers, just tobacco. And it’s a dislike that firmly marches across the border to irrational for personal reasons… But if there’s to be a general reduction in smoking, there needs to be a reduction in tobacco purchasing, which in turn needs something to replace the income from farming it.

   This is part of other conversations with people physically, as well. The “cloud” for computing is a way to send machines off to places with less-skilled technical labor, perhaps the Appalachians (e.g. Goog’s place in Lenoir NC)… In my field (high-performance computing), clouds are currently less than useful, and there’s quite a bit of debate about their future. I’m trying to convince people there are non-technical reasons why they’re interesting and should have a future.

   But for server farming (no, seriously, that’s one term) to be more than just another collection of jobs that can flow away as easily, the cloud platforms need to give the opportunities for the labor to learn and grow. That’s not my immediate area, but with the push to make clouds more useful for us, perhaps we can encourage the use of more open systems that permit people to learn. And then hopefully the skill set is a bit more secure than, say, apparel. That used to be big in the tri-cities area (SW VA, NE Tenn), but all those jobs floated across the seas.

   I’m just one person without a whole lot of leverage at the moment, so perhaps this is all just babbling. If I babble at the right people, though…

   I don’t even know where to start about the electricity aspect. There are so many inefficiencies even in the current generation and transmission system… sigh.

5. 

   sherry August 9th, 2009 at 1:36 pm

   Jason — apologies. I realized I was in no condition to conduct a discussion. Lots of input at Hindman, little sleep. Great crash this week.

   First, I think tobacco is a lot like coal mining in that the people involved knew no other job path, but there’s also just some digging in whenever anybody calls you evil. I have come to believe we have to be really careful with that kind of rhetoric because it tends to entrench people. Maybe that comes from having been born on the wrong side of so many liberal positions. I consider myself liberal.

   Coal is like tobacco, a great source of tax dollars for Ky, and little has been done by state govt to find other income. Well — no — let me say that alternatives for jobs carry their own downside, like selling the best land in the state to a major car manufacturer or bringing in a Walmart super store or courting the biotech industry.

   So explain to me more about clouds.