*blush* The Absolutes of Good Writing thread has now got me noticing all my mispellings, incorrect use of pronouns and typos. Let me just say I am aware that there are a number of the same in my last post.

In the USA (I don't know about other places) activists for a number of issues that could be classified as environmental and/or social justice, don't do a very good job of helping the 'average Joe' understand why environmental protection, concern for the poor, etc. are in his 'enlightened best interest.' Which means, I guess, they are not very effective at 'enlightening' folks. And, the immediate now and short-term future are much more compelling to most of us than the more distant and more speculative future.

West Virgina, eastern Kentucky and southwest Virginia, the main coal areas of the southern Appalachians, are hardscrabble places to live. Look around the world. Mountainous regions nearly always are. Coal mining brought the closest thing to economic prosperity to West Virginia the people who lived there had ever known. (Not even pre-colonial Native Americans made the place home. It was, for the most part, strictly hunting territory.) Although coal production in West Virginia has steadily increased over the last 20 to 30 years, the number of mine related jobs has been steadily declining since the early to mid 1960's, as automation and new mining technologies have continuously advanced and reduced the need for manpower. And the population of the State continues to steadily and dramatically decline. There are no economic alternatives to coal of any significance there. There is a standing joke "Would the last person to leave West Virginia please remember to turn off the lights?" that has too much truth in it for comfort.

The miners themselves have vehemently opposed environmental regulation, and from a purely personal, short term perspective, with good reason. Environmental regulations definitely effect the availabiliy of mining related jobs. Let me repeat, there are no alternatives to coal. so the people there cling as hard as they can to the few jobs left, and do everything they can to keep another plank in the ship from falling away. What they don't see or accept, and really, how could you expect them to, is the ship will eventually come apart, and nothing they do can stop it.

The only message is "You are doomed. Accept it. Since you are doomed anyway, have the foresight and the - what - altruism? to save the land. It will hasten your doom a bit to go ahead and do so, but your doom is inevitable. So make it count."