![]() While many Republicans and Democrats disagree about the role the fossil fuel industry should place in the future of the country, there is bipartisan support for revitalizing the coal communities that helped build this country and can now pioneer a low carbon future.Īdvocates argue there’s a moral imperative to help these communities. Their rhetoric belies a growing number of Kentuckians who understand the climate science and are looking for economic opportunities amid the energy transition. This year, Kentucky’s Republican-dominated Legislature passed legislation making it more difficult to retire coal-fired power plants, and prohibited state investment advisers from considering the long-term ramifications of climate change. As a result, many elected officials who represent coal communities are leveraging economic struggles to push for laws supporting the fossil fuel industry at the expense of the climate. State lawmakers are less concerned with climate change than the economic turmoil they say the energy transition is causing in their communities. Allowing warming to go unchecked will push people further into poverty, contribute to food insecurity, mass migration and potentially spur global armed conflict across the planet. In Kentucky, the winter nights are warmer, the last decade has been wetter, and scientists say natural disasters like last July’s floods in eastern Kentucky will become more frequent. It’s disappearing from the hearts and minds of Americans who are more concerned with the impacts of a warming planet than the fate of fossilized plant matter and those who mined it. Counties like Harlan are now among the most economically distressed in the country, according to the Appalachian Regional Commission.Ĭoal is disappearing from the electricity grid. Nearly three-quarters of them make less than the national median household income.Īppalachia tops the government’s list of energy communities most impacted by closures. ![]() Nearly 15 million Americans live in energy communities impacted by coal mine and power plant closures, according to an LPM News analysis. The nation’s reliance on coal, however, is coming to an end, and the communities that once produced it are struggling to adapt. Generations of Americans relied on the coal mined in Kentucky to forge the steel, heat the furnaces and power the homes of this country. “God put the coal here for the mountain people to make a living,” Craiger said, adding that she’d like to keep coal a part of this community for as long as possible. Many come through for the local tourist attractions: a nearby state park, the Portal 31 underground mine tour and the Kentucky Coal Museum. Guests check-in like students late for class, walk up the stairs past the lockers and swipe a key card to check into a classroom for the night. ![]() Today, Craiger makes her living on the nostalgia left in the coal economy’s wake.Ĭraiger works as the chief financial officer at the former town school that now serves as a hotel. Linda Craiger’s ancestors mined coal in the Appalachian hillsides of Harlan County. ![]()
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