Just because we use coal for something is not a reason to continue to use coal for something. We have no business generating electricty by burning coal to heat water etc. And the history of coal mining in Kentucky, West Virginia, Ohio, is one of shame, corruption.

Interesting that one of the miners, when asked why he does it, said it was because it paid $15. an hour, and he couldn't make that much doing anything else. That is at the heart of all the Enron, World Com, etc. problems, and the reason that Capitalism as it is practised today must someday be replaced with another system.

We need to demand a fair living wage, a maximum wage, not a minimum wage, & no private ownership of natural resources, which ultimately belong to the world. Same story about the women in Africa protesting Chevron, and why we are bombing Afghanistan and why we want to invade Iraq. Some oil industry execs want to get their grubby little hands on the oil, pay hardworking people the least they can to do the dangerous and difficult work, do little or nothing for the people who live there, pay off the people in power, people they 'can do business with', ie, corrupt, and ultimately amass as much money as they can, and subvert the peoples' will to their own by buying the government, and get the tax payers to give them a handout at the public trough of corporate welfare to boot, and then move an office off shore so they pay no taxes, but in some cases actually get tax credit refunds! The gall, the greed, the grief.