With the recent tragedy in a West Virginia coal mine, debates have  stirred once again on why we have so many people risking their lives to  dig coal when there are so many alternatives.  First and foremost, let’s  not forget that for many, coal mining is their way of life.  It’s how  they feed their families, pay their bills and they take pride in the  hard work they do—much more pride than it takes to collect a welfare  check from the government each month.  The respect I have for these  workers, some of whom are close friends, goes far beyond words.   They  literally risk their lives every day to give us many of the things we  take for granted, primarily electricity.

Clearly, the best option for alternative electrical power is  nuclear.  However, environmentalists fight this option to the death and  have stymied progress for decades.  France currently gets approximately  80% of its electric from nuclear power.  Why we would allow countries to  make so much progress leaving us in the dust baffles me.  Basically,  the very people who want to get rid of coal fired electric plants are  the very people who have prevented progress with nuclear power, thus  they are the reason we are so dependent on coal in the first place.

That leads me to the primary reason we are so dependent on  coal—environmentalists.  Wind?  Can’t do that, the windmills kill bats  and birds.  Solar?  Can’t put those panels up in the desert, it will  disturb the bugs in the ground underneath.  Geothermal?  You’re  disturbing natural beauty and we sure aren’t going to put something in  Yellowstone.  Nuclear?  Well, the environmentalists don’t like it  because it’s ultimately the safest energy source according to records  and it would eliminate the debate over all the other sources and  environmentalists wouldn’t have a cause to chase after.   There is one  big point that’s rarely brought up and that is with the exception of  nuclear power, all the other options still require a traditional  electrical infrastructure of some type for when the wind isn’t blowing  as much and the sun isn’t shining as much.  This means we have to employ  hundreds of thousands of people for dual energy capabilities.  I firmly  believe we should always search for alternative, better sources of  energy, just as I believe we should work to keep our environment clean.   I don’t believe in taking care of the environment for the farce they  call Global Warming or Climate change, and I don’t believe in seeking  alternatives that require old infrastructure as a backup, thus making  the energy even more expensive.

Finally, I want to make a point about who is really at fault for the  recent tragedy in the Upper Big Branch coal mine.  Of course, everyone  blames Massey Energy CEO Don Blankenship for putting profits before  safety because they are the ones that sign the paychecks.  The news  channels rarely showed the footage of Mr. Blankenship stating the reason  the mine was open and operating was because State and Federal agencies  had deemed it safe to be open.  If the Mine Safety and Health  Administration were a private company, there would have been people  fired, congressional hearings and heads would roll.  Instead, just like  every other government agency, we will learn how the MSHA needs more  funding and manpower.  No changes in leadership will take place and the  agency will grow in size.  Sometime in the future, whether it’s next  week, month or years from now, there will be another mine tragedy and  the same questions will arise—who is at fault?  You tell me, is it  Massey Energy, the government agency that oversees mine safety, or is it  the environmentalists who stymie alternative energy progress?  In my  opinion, Massey Energy is the least at fault of the three.  I’m not  saying Massey shouldn’t share in the blame but the fact is the mine was  open because it hadn’t been ordered to shut down.  On top of that, there  hasn’t even been an investigation into the cause yet so we do not even  know if any of the violations had anything to do with the tragedy.  Just  a day or two before the explosion, there was a 2.9 earthquake reported  in West Virginia and the recovery attempts were slowed because of  seismic activity.  How do we know that didn’t cause a release of methane  into the mine, resulting in the explosion?  Everyone is quick to point  fingers and place blame on the person or company that makes more money  than they do and claim it is greed.  As Milton Friedman once said, “We’re  never greedy.  It’s only the other fellow that’s greedy.”