The coal industry in Kentucky and West Virginia has been allowed to operate outside federal law for 30 years, destroying headwater streams and leveling the landscape on a sweeping, uncontrolled scale.
Reversing a rule enacted by the outgoing Bush administration won't change that unless government agencies at the federal and state levels actually start enforcing the 1977 Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act.
Whether that will happen under the Obama administration remains to be seen. There have been some encouraging signs.
The most recent is Interior Secretary Ken Salazar's effort to get the courts to overturn a rule change the Bush administration approved on the way out of office.
The Bush rule legalized the lawbreaking by doing away with a 100-foot protective zone around streams.
We'll know more of what to expect from the new administration when we see who is named to leadership posts at two key agencies, the Office of Surface Mining and Mine Safety and Health Administration.
Meanwhile, coal's defenders need to come up with a better response to suggestions that coal should be mined and burned more responsibly and with less harm to the environment.
The industry persists in portraying itself as a victim, despite coal's contribution to climate change; the obvious damage to water, land and quality of life in mining regions, and the fact that better than half of this country's electric power comes from burning coal.
When you've had the kind of free rein (and reign) that King Coal has enjoyed, perhaps any curbs seem threatening.
But the industry shoots itself in the foot by warning that any curbs on destructive mining practices or carbon emissions would kill coal mining and produce even more unemployment and suffering in Appalachia.
That kind of refusal to adapt or change will convince even more people that coal is a dead end and that Appalachian historian Ron Eller is right when he calls for ending all strip-mining in Kentucky, especially mountaintop removal.
After all there are a lot of places on this Earth (neighbors Tennessee and North Carolina come to mind) that have prospered by treating their mountains and streams as assets, not as "overburden" to be ground up to get to the hydrocarbons underneath.
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