FAYETTEVILLE, W.Va. (AP) — The winner of this yr’s West Virginia Coal Competition teen magnificence pageant walks among the many ruins of a neighborhood deserted 70 years in the past and imagines the rusted stays of coal tipples and processing vegetation coming again to life.
Ava Johnson is aware of West Virginia coal is not going to ever be what it as soon as was. However as she makes her method alongside overgrown railroad tracks close to the deserted Kay Moor mine within the New River Gorge Nationwide Park in search of spikes for her assortment, the 16-year-old historical past buff says she has heard individuals speaking with hope about the way forward for an trade that has introduced good-paying jobs to her state for the higher a part of two centuries.
“You can’t appreciate being a true West Virginian unless you realize that people risk their lives every single day to make ours better,” she mentioned.
A lot of that renewed sense of hope is predicated on the actions of President Donald Trump, who earlier this month issued new govt orders aimed toward reviving an vitality supply that has lengthy been flagged by scientists because the world’s most polluting fossil gas, one which immediately contributes to the warming of the planet.
Trump, who has pledged since his first run for the presidency in 2016 to “save coal,” issued orders to permit mining on federal land and to loosen some emissions requirements meant to curb coal’s environmental influence.
“All those plants that have been closed are going to be opened, if they’re modern enough,” Trump mentioned on the signing ceremony. “(or) they’ll be ripped down and brand-new ones will be built.”
Trump and his allies are “spinning a false narrative,” mentioned Tyson Slocum, who teaches vitality and local weather coverage on the College of Maryland Honors School and is the vitality program director for the nonprofit Public Citizen. He mentioned market forces have shifted away from coal in methods that can not be reversed, an opinion extensively shared amongst economists.
“There’s nothing that Trump can do that’s going to materially impact the domestic coal market,” Slocum mentioned in a phone interview. “The energy markets, the steel markets, have fundamentally changed. And learning how to adapt and how to provide the real solutions to the concerns and fears in coal communities would be a more effective strategy than promising them a return that isn’t going to happen.”
At a coal exposition, renewed optimism
That was not the prevailing temper at a latest coal exposition in Charleston, attended by Johnson and lots of others who discovered encouragement within the Republican president’s phrases, even when some expressed skepticism about his capacity to make coal nice once more.
“For years, our industry has felt like it’s been a little bit of a whipping boy, like a political, sacrificial pawn,” mentioned Steven Tate of Viacore, an organization that makes an equipment that helps mine operators restrict the quantity of coal mud in a mine. “We feel like we’re finally starting to get the recognition that our industry deserves.”
Some mentioned Trump’s orders demonstrated respect for employees who gave their lives within the mines — 21,000 in West Virginia, essentially the most out of any state — and for a useful resource that helped construct America.
“Trump stood his ground all the way through,” mentioned Jimbo Clendenin, a retired mine gear specialist whose grandson began working in coal mining three years in the past. “He mentioned he was for coal. And lots of people — even a few them right here in West Virginia — mentioned, ’I simply suppose he mentioned that to get into workplace.′
“Now, nobody’s got any doubt. He’s for coal.”
In latest many years, the Democratic Social gathering’s aggressive push towards clear vitality led to the set up of extra renewable vitality and the conversion of coal-fired vegetation to be fueled by cheaper and cleaner-burning pure fuel.
In 2016, Trump seized on the difficulty, promising to finish what he described as Democratic President Barack Obama’s “war on coal” and to save lots of miners’ jobs. It helped in West Virginia, the place a majority of voters in each county supported Trump in three presidential elections.
Trump didn’t convey the trade again throughout his first time period. In West Virginia, which employs essentially the most miners of any state, the variety of coal jobs fell from 11,561 at first of his presidency to 11,418 on the finish of 2020, maybe slowing coal’s steep decline however not stopping it.
Slocum mentioned Trump can defang the federal Environmental Safety Company and decontrol mining, however he can not save coal.
“It’s not the EPA, it’s not Democrats that declared this war on coal,” Slocum mentioned. “It was capitalism and natural gas. And being honest about the reasons for coal’s decline is the least we can do for coal-dependent communities instead of lying to them, which the Trump administration is doing. Sometimes people want to believe a lie, because it’s easier than facing a hard truth.”
A gentle decline in jobs
In 2009, the EPA discovered that planet-warming greenhouse gases put public well being and welfare in peril, a dedication that new EPA chief Lee Zeldin has urged Trump to rethink. Scientists oppose Zeldin’s push, and Slocum mentioned the endangerment discovering and the necessity to transfer away from coal dependence “is not a theoretical debate. It is a factual, scientific one, albeit one that does not occur within the current Trump administration.”
Nonetheless, there is no such thing as a doubt that the tradition of coal is woven into the material of West Virginia. A miner could be a coal trade employee, but additionally a sports activities workforce mascot, a picture emblazoned on the state flag or the identify of a breakfast sandwich at Tudor’s Biscuit World.
Within the Nineteen Fifties, greater than 130,000 West Virginians labored within the trade, which then had a inhabitants of round 2 million. Manufacturing peaked in 2008, a yr earlier than Johnson was born. However by then, the variety of coal employees had dropped to 25,000, largely as a consequence of mechanization.
Heather Clay, who runs West Virginia Coal Competition’s magnificence pageant and social media, mentioned dropping coal jobs — typically six-figure incomes — was particularly vital in a state with one of many nation’s highest poverty charges.
“It’s so much more than what people outside of West Virginia understand,” she mentioned. ’They’re at all times saying, ‘Shut down coal,’ ‘Shut down coal.’ So that you need to shut down our financial system? You need to shut down our households? You need to shut down our lifestyle? And it has, for lots of people.”
Innovation, not elimination
Trump and coal trade advocates say protecting coal within the U.S. vitality portfolio is important for sustaining the facility grid, servicing rising demand from improvements like synthetic intelligence facilities and protecting America energy-independent.
However John Deskins, director of the West Virginia College Bureau of Enterprise and Financial Analysis, mentioned it might take a major shift within the underlying economics for it to make monetary sense for utilities to construct new coal-fired vegetation.
Pure fuel is cleaner and cheaper, he mentioned, and it’s the route most utilities are shifting in. Earlier this yr, First Vitality introduced plans to exchange its two remaining coal-fired energy vegetation with services that burn pure fuel.
Johnson wears the sash and crown from her pageant victory over a black gown and sneakers as she traipses by way of the ruins of the deserted Kay Moor mine. She talks enthusiastically in regards to the trade’s previous, but additionally, sometimes, about what she thinks could possibly be a brighter future for coal in West Virginia due to what Trump has completed.
“I think that it will positively impact not just the industry,” she mentioned, “but people’s lives.”
