It’s Getting Hot In Here

Lunch time as usual was interrupted in the Capitol Building of West Virginia today when a spontaneous Fossil Fools Awards Ceremony began. The ceremony was held to celebrate West Virginia governor Joe Manchin and Coal Baron Don Blankenship receiving the prestigious award of Life Time Achievement in Fossil Foolery in Appalachia. Unfortunately, neither Manchin nor Blankenship were able to collect their awards in person, but news cameras from several local TV stations were there as stand-ins accepted the awards in their honor.

Unfortunately, Manchin and Blankenship were beat out by Bush and Cheney for the International Fossil Fools Lifetime Achievement Award. Because of their hard work, however, we decided to award them a special Appalachian Fossil Fools Award. Our own boys can certainly brag that they’ve done more than their share for a small state when it comes to advancing the cause of enhancing the profits of big coal at the expense of our economy, our mountains, and our future.

Activists showed up with 8 foot high model wind turbines and a functional mobile solar panel to show alternatives to fossil fuel use, advocating for a clean just energy transition away from the toxic coal industry that has crushed West Virginia’s economy. Several thousand green jobs in wind turbine and solar panel manufacturing are just across from the West Virginia border in Pennsylvania and Maryland. Governor Manchin’s insistence on being a fossil fool has not allowed industry like this to employ West Virginia workers.

Don “Blank-Check” Blankenship has spent $5 million getting his coal cronies into the WV Supreme courts and state legislature, or at least trying to, as in the last election, 39 of the 40 candidates he funded lost. Blankenship’s company Massey has a history of union busting, safety violations and violating water pollution standards more than 4500 times over six years. Massey was recently subject to a 2.4 billion fine for said water violations, but only had to pay $20 million of that. Massey’s subsidiary in Martin County, Kentucky was responsible for the “biggest environmental disaster in the history of the southeast” when 250 million gallons of toxic sludge were released. Luckily, Blankenship has friends in high places, as he was recently documented vacationing in Monaco with WV Supreme Court Justice Spike Maynard.

Governor “Baloney” Joe Manchin is trying to line up support for five coal-to-liquids plants in the state. Each one these experimental facilities will cost a couple of billion dollars—to be heavily subsidized by taxpayers in the poorest state in the US, of course. Manchin strip mined his own family land to fuel a gob plant there. Combine this with his refusal to help build a safe new school at Marsh Fork Elementary, which is within 300 feet of a coal processing plant and at the foot of a 2.8 billion gallon toxic coal waste dam, and you see that Baloney Joe is a truly a fossil fool of the highest order.

Fossil Fool festivities continued with a less than successful attempt to drop our West Virginia Foolie by Manchin’s office, but no fear. Climate activists interested in working together on stopping this tomfoolery are invited to a local coffee shop, Taylor Books, Wed. April 3 at 5:30 for the movie, “Everything’s Cool.” For more information see www.ohvec.org, www.crmw.net, www.seac.org.