THE Bush administration sent sales teams into the real world this week to convince people that the President's energy strategy is sound.
It's a strategy that begins with summary rejection of the Kyoto Protocol and ends with no real commitment to reduce U. S. greenhouse gas emissions. It's an approach that would deepen America's reliance on fossil fuels and old technologies by giving less push to development of renewable power sources such as wind and sun.
It would be good for the coal industry. But would it be good for America? Recent news from the coalfields sheds light on that question.
* The former superintendent of a coal mine in Leslie County admitted to a federal judge that he failed to follow a safety plan for hanging curtains to direct fresh air into underground areas where miners work.
Proper ventilation is absolutely essential to preventing miners' lungs from filling up with coal dust. It's also a safeguard against explosions.
Failing to maintain it is like a truck firm failing to check its fleet's brakes -- a remarkably dangerous practice. But last week's guilty plea from the Eastern Kentucky mine boss was an entirely unremarkable event in an industry where dangerous rule-breaking is common.
* Boosters lavished praise on themselves for the popularity of Stone Crest Golf Course in Floyd County, which is part of a $21.3 million effort to prove that the flat land left by mountaintop removal of coal can be used for recreation, industry and housing.
Popularity isn't proof, though. Since the course opened this spring, soil erosion and other site problems have run up maintenance costs to as much as $47,000 per month. The same instability and vulnerability that have defeated decades worth of strip site conversion plans are making it tough for the city of Prestonsburg, which oversees this project. Just imagine, though, the environmental damage throughout Central Appalachia on the more than 100,000 acres of mountaintop removal sites that don't get this kind of special scrutiny.
* Despite the obvious safety hazard involved in employing miners with little or no knowledge of English, an Eastern Kentucky firm recently sent three Mexicans to take the state surface mining exam. The company asked the Department of Mines and Minerals to let the men take the test in Spanish. The department wisely refused. All three failed the test.
The excuse for seeking foreign miners is an alleged shortage of applicants for 1,000 coal mine jobs in Eastern Kentucky. But that shortage has proven about as authentic as the notion that mountain people are one-eyed and shoeless.
In fact, two of the coal industry's own members of the Mining Board told a weekend conference at the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Academy that the industry had overestimated the shortage.
Maybe that will discourage the schemes that other, less-responsible coal types might have been concocting to import low-wage foreign miners into the Appalachian coalfields and give them less expansive (and less expensive) training than required for local recruits.
George W. Bush wants more of this kind of stuff?
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