Save Coal Miners: Just Say No to Coal Power.

President Obama says we need more than prayers to protect coal miners, we need action. He’s right. Unfortunately, he’s also wrong.

Specifically, he’s wrong about clean coal. This amazingly durable boondoggle has been a buzzword for “free money” to interest groups and “jobs” to unions and workers in the coal states. States where presidential elections have been won or lost the past two decades; Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia and Montana (the latter two were closer than you might think in the last election). The one thing clean coal definitely isn’t, however, is good for coal miners.

Coal mining is one of the most dangerous, dirty, unhealthy jobs on the planet. Thousands of people die around the world every year in coal mining accidents. Admittedly, most of those deaths are in China, which has 19th century worker protection.

Sadly though, America’s per capita coal deaths (deaths per coal miner) make mining the most dangerous job in America. If you’re a coal miner in the U.S. you have about a 1 in 2600 chance of being killed in an accident at work this year.(In China the best estimates make you ten times more likely to die in a mine accident there, 1 in 250 mine workers died in 2007, according to this story.) None of these figures takes into account the many thousands of people who die of coal related diseases like lung disease and various cancers each year.

The President should do everything he can, everything government can do, to protect mine workers. We do need an emphatic culture change in the Mine Safety and Health Administration, so that mine workers interests, rather than mine company interests, are at the heart of decisions there. We do need better oversight, more inspection, and stronger prosecution of negligent mine operators. But most importantly, we need fewer mines. Fewer mines are the surest way to fewer mine deaths. We have to move beyond coal eventually, or we’ll destroy the ecosystems that support our civilizations. Experts have been telling us this for years.

So… if the President really wants to do everything he can to protect mine workers, he should drop the “clean coal” talk immediately. He should use this moment to direct government money, energy and time into moving workers in coal states into cleaner, healthier, greener jobs. We are not starting from scratch in this regard. There are wind energy projects in West Virginia, solar projects in Pennsylvania, green technology manufacturing plants in Ohio.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was supposed to begin this transition. But thanks to “clean coal” language and the massive coal industry lobby, we’re still propping up this deadly dangerous and disastrous 19th century technology. It’s time our government really protected workers, by helping to make every job safe and sustainable.