Looking Back And Pointing Ahead At The Future of Coal Mining in Appalachia

People in coal country are pleading for help as the coal industry nears the end of its long decline. This week on Inside Appalachia, we explore the economic and health impacts coal has had on communities in Appalachia. We’ll talk about the past and the future of this industry through the lens of its labor history to its future amid tough talks about the world’s climate crisis. And, we’ll meet a woman who entered the male-dominated coal industry. She tells us why she stayed, despite resistance from her family.

Coal’s been in slow decline here for decades, but it’s been more noticeable in the last 10 years. That’s meant hard times for communities that have long relied on the industry for jobs and taxes. Coal mining jobs have dipped by 66 percent in West Virginia compared to their heyday 50 years ago — and experts don’t predict a comeback. But we’re not alone; other places around the world face similar dilemmas. We learn what people in West Germany did 50 years ago — when coal executives and political leaders had to make tough decisions when it came to the future of coal, and their home.

The Mountain State isn’t the only place to reckon with the difficulty of transitioning away from a coal economy into something different.

West Germany emerged from World War II as one of the leading coal and steel producers in the world. Then, in the 1960s, oil emerged as a competitor, and the country found itself in the midst of an economic crisis. But there, the emergency prompted a strange and unusual alliance.

“The state government, the regional governments, the trade unions, and the employers, the industrialists, sat together and tried to find solutions to the problem,” said Stefan Moitra, historian at the German Mining Museum in Bochum in the Ruhr Valley — a densely populated valley in West Germany that’s home to five million people.

Read more: https://www.wvpublic.org/inside-appalachia-2021/2021-10-01/looking-back-and-pointing-ahead-at-the-future-of-coal-mining-in-appalachia