I come from a coal family. My parents are conservative republicans who believe Global Warming is “a left-wing conspiracy to take over the world”. I quote them, but I’m really quoting their favorite source of news and opinion: Rush Limbaugh. A paradox looms over our house because despite my parents’ chosen ideology they’re ahead of most Americans when it comes to the environment. We recycle everything, use CFLs, buy Energy Star appliances, and super-insulated our remodeled house. My parents are intelligent, well-educated people. But somehow in the years when I was away at school, things changed dramatically. Suddenly they became stereotypes, the people you hear about. We went from CNN to loyal Fox News fanatics. What happened? How did they fall into this recirculating trap where their perspective of the world is the only possible reality? I believe it started ten years ago when my father made a major career change.
When I was a child, my father was a computer engineer. My dad knew the coal business from his father, who was an ornery, manipulative, mean smoke stack of a mountain man. Grandpa owned three coal mines in Harlan County, Kentucky. If you’ve ever heard of “Bloody Harlan” or listened to Kathy Mattea, you are familiar with my family’s coal mines. Worker strikes were not discussed at my grandfather’s table. My father entered the coal industry in an attempt to heal his broken relationship with his father. When that failed, he spent years searching for another job in another industry. No one would hire him, as if his highly specialized coal experience had stained him. When my grandfather died, my father reluctantly returned to coal. 
When you speak to someone in the coal industry, it is easy to see that their job requires an antagonistic opinion of environmental issues. My father loves nature. When he goes hunting he doesn’t take bullets, but sometimes sneaks his camera along. His desktop is decorated with a breathtaking scene of unspoiled Appalachia. He took the photo himself from the coal mines; behind the camera the unseen landscape is as barren as the moon. During a recent tour of a coal mine, my father eagerly pointed to the run-off pools that help prevent muddy waters from ruining local creeks. The pools were sludgy and stained brown or black; the creeks were the same color. “You can find frogs and fish in those pools, they’re not polluted.” He was happy to reassure me that life would return to the wasted mountain sides, and every struggling weed or wandering flock of wild turkey confirm that life will prevail. But the rich biodiversity of Appalachia cannot be replanted with rows of one species of fast-growing saplings or grass from another continent. What he believes in principle lacks good science because he chooses to ignore parts of the picture. He aims his camera at what he likes best.
The selective absorption of fact is a self-defense mechanism. No one wants to be the bad guy, and despite his profession my father is a good man. But facts are notoriously persistent and have a bad habit of contradicting his view of how nature works. Try and address this and he begins a well-rehearsed retort about cost, unattainable expectations from tree-hugging scientists, and the burden of government regulations. I never have the courage to remind him of what happened when the mine companies were left to their own devices. Those days are still not discussed in the open.
I know my father’s rationalizations well. Any mention of politics or the environment elicits a long defensive rant. Who can blame them for feeling embattled? They are embattled. Many of their (former?) customers are starting to turn against them and decry the human and ecological cost of extracting a seam of coal from mountains that were forsaken and forgotten until recently. Before the coal these mountains were where people really did inbreed, really did go blind from moonshine, and they lived like the iconic images of “Deliverance”. When fast food, Walmart, and Best Western came to Harlan, KY in the 1990s, they were seen as saviors. Civilization had reached them at last. Ultimately the coal mines are still the lifeblood of the local economy. The mining companies are quick to point this out even as they invest in mining techniques and equipment that require less labor. They all feel embattled, miners and mine owners. The outside world betrayed them upon arrival, all their ecological skeletons were swept out of the closet. So they do what they’ve always done and stick to tradition. Coal has been tradition in Harlan since the dawn of the nineteenth century. Bloody Harlan lives on in the black lungs of miners who refuse to wear available face masks because their fathers before them “didn’t need them”. Their loyalty is to the mining companies and the mining companies are loyal to each other. Like any mountain man, no doubt they’ll fight right down to the bitter end and always wonder where everything went wrong.
