\nunderground with coal miners and learned a lot about the dangers and problems
\nof mining coal. I also learned a lot
\nabout Don “I’m a poor guy with a lot of money” Blankenship, the CEO of Massey
\nEnergy, which owns the mine where at least 25 men died as the result of a methane
\nexplosion last Monday. Because of that
\nexperience, I’m often asked to comment when there is breaking news about a mine
\ndisaster.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My new book, which is about geoengineering the earth’s
\nclimate, would seem to be entirely unrelated. But in fact—as I tried to explain to the MSNBC producer—it really
\nisn’t.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
For one thing, writing Big Coal convinced me of the need to
\ntake geoengineering seriously. After
\nfour years of researching and writing about the coal industry, it became very
\nclear to me that the world is not going to stop burning coal any time
\nsoon. Nor is carbon capture and
\nsequestration—the only technology on the horizon that might allow us to burn
\ncoal without melting the planet—ever likely to amount to much (too
\ncomplicated, too expensive, the industry itself too moribund to ever change).<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Upshot? Climate
\ncalamities ahead. Geoengineering might
\nindeed be a foolish idea, but we live in foolish times.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
But there are other connections between the West Virginia mine
\ndisaster and geoengineering.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Both are creations of America’s failed energy
\npolicies. The fact that the U.S.—the
\nrichest, most technologically sophisticated nation on the planet—is still burning
\nmore than a billion tons of black rocks every year to generate electricity is a
\npolitical outrage. Yes, burning coal
\ngenerates cheap power. But as everyone reading this knows, coal is only
\n“cheap” because the industry uses its muscle to make sure that the true costs—the broken bodies of coal miners, the blasted mountains of Appalachia, the
\nasthmatic children who live near coal plants, the superheated planet—are not
\nfactored into the price. If they were,
\nwe’d be burning a lot less coal, and we might be a lot further along in the
\ndevelopment of cleaner, more sustainable energy sources.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And of course if we were burning less coal, we probably
\nwouldn’t be talking about geoengineering at all. In this sense, geoengineering is a
\ntechnological fix for a broken political system.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Another connection between the West Virginia coal disaster and
\ngeoengineering: Who eats the risk?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
One of the big fears about geoengineering is that it will
\nallow rich, technologically sophisticated nations to essentially call the shots
\nwhen it comes to deciding what kind of climate we live in. It’s not a big leap to assume that these
\nnations will want to optimize the climate for their benefit.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And if we starting monkeying around with the climate and
\nsomething goes wrong—oops, sorry,
\ndidn’t mean to turn off your monsoons!—who do you think is going to
\nsuffer most? The people in the Sahel or the people in Sausalito?<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It’s a similar dynamic in the coal industry. Don Blankenship
\ndoesn’t have to worry about getting blown up in a methane explosion. He flies around in a black helicopter, lives
\non the top a West Virginia
\nmountain—one of the few in the region that still has a top—and cashed in
\nstock worth nearly $4 million this year alone. If he can push his workers to work longer hours, cut corners, and run
\nmore coal, well, hey, that’s how capitalism works!
\nThis is a commodity business, after all. Coal is coal, whether there’s blood on it or not.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n All the risks, of course, are borne by the workers in the <\/p>\n So they shut their mouths about the outrages they see and <\/p>\n ——-<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Editor’s note: This is the second in a series of posts from Jeff Goodell, author of How to Cool the Planet: Geoengineering and the Audacious Quest to Fix Earth’s Climate<\/a>. Here’s his first post<\/a>. And here’s an interview with Goodell about his book<\/a>, and an earlier interview about <\/a>Big Coal<\/a>.<\/p>\n Related Links:<\/strong><\/p>\n Senate Energy spox responds; more on fossil-fuel safety and our energy future<\/a><\/p>\n World Bank vote gives billions to coal<\/a><\/p>\n Another Tragic Iceberg Awaiting Massey’s Titanic Violations: Brushy Fork Dam<\/a><\/p>\n
\nmine. The men and women who labor in the
\nnoisy darkness for eight, ten, twelve hours a day, most of whom are just trying
\nto feed their families. They know they are replaceable, that if they open their
\nmouths about the dangerous conditions they see or the fears they have about a
\nmine starting to go bad, they will find themselves stocking yo-yos at Wal-Mart
\nfor seven bucks an hour.<\/p>\n
\nkeep working. They eat the risk. And the great tragedy is, sometimes they end
\nup dead. <\/p>\n