What? Democrats have all but screamed they’re eliminating coal plants. Why are you stunned that many of these areas are now voting red given the dems stance on ending their livelihood? These folks are the big losers in the war on coal. It’s a major reason why WV has shifted Republican (that and gun control). Remember, Manchin who was a hugely popular governor of WV SHOT the climate change bill in a TV ad b/c it was so toxic with WV. And he had a tough fight b/c he’s a member of a party who’s essentially environmental message is: We’re destroying your town and job to save the world. Great for the world but no so comforting to those in coal country.
So why is so surprising that coal country is going Republican in a big way with R’s picking up a WV senate seat?
Because it’s a common political trope to look at some group of people to whom you don’t belong, assume that you know their minds and considerations better than they do, and insist that they’re voting wrong on Internet forums.
This doesn’t get enough attention. It’s not as if environmental legislation is without cost, and that cost eventually falls on those at the bottom rungs of society through increased energy price or as we see here through job losses. The situation in coal country is even more dire. Mining drives the economy, without it there’s nothing. We have to balance environmental protection with preserving the welfare of these communities.
That’s a human truth. We mirror image without consideration, we impose our value systems on others, we assume without trying to understand.
I’m gonna try to avoid going into the weeds here as I’m quite cognizant that my environmental views are well outside the mainstream , but it’s not the so-called war on coal that’s having the major economic impact in the region, it’s market forces as explained here. That said, environmental regulations don’t necessarily doom an economy. Take a look at Switzerland, they are ranked 1st out of 132 countries in environmental protection yet a cursory glance shows their per capita income is the highest in Europe (by a wide margin.) They don’t have any natural resources to speak of, but they do invest in the one resource they do have - and that is its people. Maybe it’s an over simplification, but it seems to me that when economic output is tied solely to natural resource extraction that activity retards economic diversification and innovation.
Appalachia needed to this long ago, but they didn’t. And that’s the fault of both parties and its leaders.
