Climate change & Appalachian politics: the clash of party and principles

[theHandpuppet]

Why is it, come election day, so many of us who identify as Democrats and progressives feel as if we have to hold our noses while voting? Even when the Republican candidates on the ballot would make a Strom Thurmond look like Dennis Kucinich, too many times I feel as if I'm casting a ballot for any alternative, which of course is the person who simply has a (D) beside their name. Unfortunately, in Appalachia too many of the most liberal Democratic candidates could barely impersonate a moderate Republican elsewhere. Nowhere is this more evident, perhaps, than in West Virginia, a state run top to bottom by Democrats. Or so they say.

Look, we all know the money behind the politics here is Big Coal. There's simply no way to explain to anyone looking towards Appalachia from the outside just how completely their political clout has devoured us. So much of the economy of the region is dependent on coal that even nipping at the margins -- a rational discourse on climate change, for instance -- can cost an election. I was reminded of this once again when Alison Lunderson Grimes, who has a real shot at Mitch McConnell's Senate seat, declined to say whether she would participate or even support her fellow Democrats in their recent "Talk-A-Thon" on climate change and how human activity is the cause of changing weather patterns. Rather than proposals about how to wean the Appalachian economy from its dependency on coal she offered more rhetoric about "clean coal technologies" in response.

Long-range plans and proposals hold little sway over unemployed miners and all the businesses that depend on their income in what has been a co-dependent coal economy. It matters not that sooner or later, the Appalachian economy must diversify or die. The expected Indian and Chinese markets for coal have not met expectations due to global economic instability and the most sought-after low-sulfur coal from the Appalachians is also the most expensive, even as market prices have steadily dropped for years now. Developing countries with an insatiable appetite for coal don't really care if their own mines provide a high-sulfur product or that their workers are paid a dollar a day under abysmal conditions. We simply can't compete with that mindset, not unless we're willing to live in a cloud of perpetual, lung-burning smog as many Chinese do, or so poison our environment that we have nary a drop of clean water to drink.

The solution is not to become even more desperate for the cheap way out -- mountaintop removal, lifting of EPA regulations, or undercutting the UMW. The time has come to face facts and challenge the future. Long term investments in education, green technologies and manufacturing, et al could pull Appalachia from its addiction to coal but plans and goals don't put money in the pockets of the very people who could help us to realize those goals. All the best intentions in the world can't foot the bill for political campaigns. Further, since there is absolutely no incentive for Big Coal to encourage a more educated workforce and a technology or manufacturing-based economy, those long-term goals are not going to be promoted even by the standard bearers of our own party. It is a fact that if you keep people poor and dependent, if you deprive their kids of a decent education or even the possibility of a way out, if you keep men and women in constant fear of the next layoff or the next mine that closes, you control them all the way to the statehouses.

What's a progressive Democrat to do in the face of what appears to be such an entrenched force, one that doesn't even recognize it's on the road to extinction? I really don't know. Come November I'll once again cast a ballot for the Democratic candidates not because I'm excited about voting for them but because the alternative is even worse. In the end, I feel ashamed to vote for Democrats who can't even bring themselves to talk about climate change but concern themselves with passing even more restrictive laws against reproductive choice, who can't muster even a meek challenge to those who poison their own citizens en masse but can lead the same masses in revolt against sane gun laws.

And yes, I will wish Alison Lunderson Grimes well in her bid to unseat Mitch McConnell. Pray, who wouldn't? Still, there's a part of me that acknowledges, sadly, that she simply can't do it by throwing down the gauntlet at Big Coal. Not in Appalachia.

For more on this subject, see this recent article:
Alison Lundergan Grimes Unclear on Supporting Senate Democrats Climate Change 'Talk-a-Thon'
http://wfpl.org/post/alison-lundergan-grimes-unclear-supporting-senate-democrats-climate-change-talk-thon