I wish improved safety oversight and regulation would be enough to prevent future disasters like the West Virginia mine explosion, but the reality is that the most effective regulation will only have a modest effect in the future.
The reason has nothing to do with regulation, which should be strengthened significant, but with coal itself. Coal requires physical extraction, which is horribly dangerous. The only way to prevent these deadly events in the future, as Jeff Goodell of Rolling Stone told Keith Olberman on Tuesday, “is to stop mining and burning coal.”
It can’t be done overnight, Goodell admits, because the United States “get(s) half of our electricity from coal.”
No one is suggesting that we stop burning coal immediately. But, you know, it‘s very clear in the big picture that the sort of era of fossil fuels is over, that we‘re moving away from coal in general.
Or, at least we should be.
The dangers and environmental impact of the extraction process bely the promise of future technological fixes on the climate front. Even if so-called clean coal wasn’t just a mirage, a pipe dream, the cost of digging it out of the ground is just too high and it will only get higher and higher and it’s just not worth the price.
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Hank Kalet 