Mountaintop removal coal operations enrich only a handful of elites while impoverishing everyone else in their proximity.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Everyone has the impulse to be elite.
From the industry's point of view, the problem is not that coal companies blast the top off mountains, turning the area into a moonscape and polluting the air and releasing toxic chemical into what's left of the local streams and aquifers. It's that the people who live near the mines are too cozy with their cousins.
An elite is someone who's for themselves and not for the country.
For better or worse, the bulk of coal industry jobs are in Appalachia - and when that coal is gone, so are the jobs.
The coal mining industry is very destructive and it doesn't have to be.
It proved easier to buy the farm to get the mineral rights than to buy the coal rights alone.
Then there was the whole concept of coal mining, which is a culture unto itself, the most dangerous occupation in the world, and which draws and develops a certain kind of man.
Coal mining is tough. Acting is just tedious.
Mountains are like the great equalizer. It doesn't matter who anyone is or what they do.
Only the elites despise earning money.