Remember, it's not JUST the people who go into those dark holes who are voting to maintain coal mining as an active industry.
You also have that Walgreens pharmacist in some small West Virginia town. You have the kindergarten teacher whose parents frequently show up to take their kids while covered in coal dust. You have the grocery store bagger whose dad is a coal miner and who would find out really quickly how little a former coal town can afford to have that grocery store...or a bagger for it.
You have whole communities who are voting to maintain Their main export industry, whether or not most of those voters ever sit foot in a shaft, or participate in chopping down mountains.
If you want to win those communities over to abandoning coal mining, you have to bring the opportunity to THEM. You have to find some suitable industry that a coal mining town can be retooled to do. They already know their days are numbered. Mechanization has been eating into their numbers for decades, now, if not centuries. But, the coal is still there. One way or another, that coal can be made to pay for prescriptions, schooling, and groceries.
Or, you can wait until all the kids with potential move out, and leave nothing but a shell of a dying town. But, then you're responsible for uprooting communities, and that's another way to lose elections.
46
@Rogers
Well, I can agree with that...but.
Remember, it's not JUST the people who go into those dark holes who are voting to maintain coal mining as an active industry.
You also have that Walgreens pharmacist in some small West Virginia town. You have the kindergarten teacher whose parents frequently show up to take their kids while covered in coal dust. You have the grocery store bagger whose dad is a coal miner and who would find out really quickly how little a former coal town can afford to have that grocery store...or a bagger for it.
You have whole communities who are voting to maintain Their main export industry, whether or not most of those voters ever sit foot in a shaft, or participate in chopping down mountains.
If you want to win those communities over to abandoning coal mining, you have to bring the opportunity to THEM. You have to find some suitable industry that a coal mining town can be retooled to do. They already know their days are numbered. Mechanization has been eating into their numbers for decades, now, if not centuries. But, the coal is still there. One way or another, that coal can be made to pay for prescriptions, schooling, and groceries.
Or, you can wait until all the kids with potential move out, and leave nothing but a shell of a dying town. But, then you're responsible for uprooting communities, and that's another way to lose elections.