Respect and Gratitude for Coal Miners

An Open Letter to Senator Joe Manchin (Originally written November 12, 2022)

Dear Senator,

I get it. I just read tweets about how you had to intervene to keep Gassaway Kroger from closing and laying off as many as 2,900 employees in West Virginia – times are hard. A few years ago, my son’s college – Wheeling Jesuit University – closed. There is not much industry left in your state. Young people are moving out of state and now, the world is meeting in Egypt to cut carbon emissions to net zero or lower.

We had a good time as humans living in a country that benefitted from the industrial revolution. We built highways, heated our malls so we could shop and plugged in to everything we could. We love the power – literally.

And who should we thank for this? Coal miners.

So, I want to suggest that the federal government consider building a monument to coal miners on or near the mall in Washington, DC. The monument should be planned with you and miners from West Virginia and other mining states. This is a sincere and grateful way to honor the service that generations of West Virginia’s residents contributed to our country.

And then, Senator, and this is the hard part – let’s let them retire by closing the mines. Not as an insult to their past contributions, but out of a present and future necessity. There is no future in coal. The case against using coal is well documented, and large parts of the country and nations around world have stopped burning coal, and existing coal burning plants are aging to be replaced by newer power plants. You know this. In West Virginia, you have lost thousands of coal mining jobs already. It is more expensive to keep the coal plants running than to replace them. Coal as a part of US energy is plummeting (See Forbes 3/15/2022).

Coal miners deserve our respect. They deserve to retire with dignity, and the sincere thanks for all the things that our nation built with coal. And they deserve to be remembered for that contribution.

Coal is a devil. And we all (you, me and everyone else!) made a deal with that burning devil to sell a part of ourselves from dark pits in the earth. And now, we are bearing the results of that Faustian pact. It is time for all of us to pay – not just you or the people from West Virginia. All of us are paying when temperatures soar in summer time, crops fail, hurricanes hit with more frequency and power, wildfires spread, and lakes/rivers start to dry up.

But, we can still save our souls and perhaps even the planet by making better choices now. And I think we should start by having a serious conversation about the way we can show respect to coal miners.

As of the Department of Energy report in 2021, there are a remaining 11,511 coal miners in West Virginia, 4567 in Wyoming, 4334 in Pennsylvania, and 4194 in Pennsylvania. Where will they go next? I would like to invite you to take a leading role in launching a public discussion about what is next for these miners? But in the meantime, we need to stop feeding a fantasy that the coal industry can return or be protected, and let the coal miners retire with dignity.