Coal CEO calls environmentalists crazy
This is too much. Don Blankenship and Massey Energy are the poster children for mountaintop removal. They not only wreck the planet by selling the coal they mine to be burned, but wreck Appalachian communities and landscape in extracting it. It’s a pretty horrible process and this guy labels us as the crazy ones?
My favorite line in this article is “The greeniacs are taking over the world.”
Coal CEO calls environmentalists crazy
Published:
Saturday, November 22, 2008 10:12 AM EST
JULIA ROBERTS GOAD
Staff WriterDon Blankenship, CEO of Massey Energy, the fourth largest coal company in the country, blasted politics and the press, comparing Charleston Gazette Editor James. A. Haught to Osama Bin Laden Thursday evening when he addressed the Tug Valley Mining Institute in Williamson.
“It is as great a pleasure for me to be criticized by the communists and the atheists of the Charleston Gazette as to be applauded by my best friends,” he said. “Because I know they are wrong. People are cowering away from being criticized by people that are our enemies. Would we be upset if Osama Bin Laden was critical of us?” he asked.
“Totally wrong. Nonsense. Absolutely crazy.”
Those are the words Blankenship used to describe Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid as well as environmental groups. He said he felt simple terms were the only ones the country could understand, that more sophisticated language was over the head of the general public.
“When we talk about it in more articulate ways, the American public doesn’t get it,” he said.
Blankenship told the crowd, which overflowed the room, spilling over to fill the Brass Tree Restaurant, that coal is getting a lot of undeserved bad press. The coal business, he said, needs to start standing up for itself in the face of the negative image being portrayed by politicians, special interests and the press.
Blankenship said the business community should put their business interests first, not environmental interests.
“They can say what they want about climate change,” he said. “But the only thing melting in this country that matters is our financial system and our economy.”
“The business community doesn’t want to lose any skin,” he said, referring to the skinned knees he sustained playing football as a boy. “Being scratched up is not so bad, but the political elite are so comfortable that they think their mission in life now is to save the world.”
Many people would give support to groups who work to disprove global warming if it was not so politically incorrect, Blankenship said.
“How many times have the people in this room heard, at the US Chamber of Commerce or at the National Mining Association, ‘I don’t believe in climate change, but I’m afraid to say that because it is a political reality.’ The greeniacs are taking over the world.”
Blankenship said politicians misrepresent facts when it comes to the environment. “Politicians occasionally trip over the truth,” he said, “but they get up and go on as if nothing happened.” He said the amount of pollution produced by American coal is negligible compared to the environmental damage done by other countries.
“Its nonsensical, its idiotic. And yet, we call it two different sides, partisan, Democrat or Republican,” he said. “If Pelosi thinks that decreasing CO2 in this country is going to save the polar bears, she’s crazy. If CO2 emissions are going to kill the polar bears, it’s going to happen. What we do here [in the US] is not going to it.”
Blankenship said he realizes the environment is a concern, but that it is only part of the picture.
“I talk a lot about the total environment,” he said. “Yes, we need to breathe clean air and have fresh water in the streams. We need to have trees and all that, but we need to be able to send out children to school. That’s a total environment.
“Most people wouldn’t believe that coal is the most important thing to the environment.”
But coal produces electricity, he argued, and that improves the quality of life. “Anywhere you go, low cost electricity, the creation of energy, of jobs, of an economy, ultimately leads to an improvement in the environment. There is no place in the world that has a good environment where people live on two dollars a day with no electricity,” he said. “If you are really believe that the world is going to overheat from the use of carbon, then whatever you do in the United States to reduce carbon emissions is wrong, because all that it will do is increase CO2 emissions in China. All the things the environmentalists told us were important, sulfur and particulates, everything they have talked about and badgered this industry about are still being polluted throughout most of the world without any controls.”
Blankenship said the industry needs to be as outspoken as those who oppose the use of carbon fuels.
“Its not only important for the greeniacs and environmentalists to change their views, but there is also a real need for business people to change their views. We have to challenge everything, and we need to get more bold. When business people act like politicians instead of expressing what the truth is, we will have people making decisions on what they call political reality.”
Blankenship said energy policies put forth by the government have not worked in the past, and they are not the answer to today’s energy crisis. He shared a video clip of then President Jimmy Carter encouraging measures such as conserving heating fuel, carpooling, using public transportation and avoiding unnecessary car trips.
“Jimmy Carter understood that there was a risk if we increased our dependence on foreign oil,” Blankenship said. “But did it not sound similar to Obama? Turn down your thermostats? Buy a smaller car? Conserve? I have spent quite a bit of time in Russia and China, and that’s the first stage. You go from having your own car to carpooling to riding the bus to mass transit. You eventually get to where you’re walking. You go from your own apartment and bathroom to sharing kitchens with four families. That’s what socialism and the elimination of capitalism and free enterprise is all about.”
“Massey is working hard to come up with soundbites or what sort of messages might resonant publicly. Unless we get people to think positively about coal, we are in trouble not only as an industry, but also as a country.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that, if you have that much energy in the ground, you shouldn’t have thousands of troops in Iraq, spending $10 billion a month, you shouldn’t by trying to patrol the world. Let the world fight over the oil. Liquify the coal.”
“Coal has to be important,” Blankenship said. “We have to stand up for coal and for energy independence. Sooner or later, we are going to have to start saying something, because if we don’t, the other side is going to start taking over.”
10 Responses to “Coal CEO calls environmentalists crazy”
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November 28th, 2008 at 5:03 am
I am with you Blankenshi_. Profits first, people, animals, water, air, mountains last. Money is where it’s at. You can never have enough. Better get in there and destroy before someone else gets the chance first. Go for it. One caveat, though: many of us know that our own survival is at stake, and we will not alow you to destroy what little of the environent we can still save. Our children deserve our best efforts. So do the animals doing without habitats, and languishing in zoo enclosures. See you in congress, the courts, and on the air.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:39 am
Short-sighted greed, tight budgets and worries about jobs
must not be used to delay the immediate and long-term cuts
in emissions necessary to avoid looming abrupt and run-away
climate change. Continued environmental decline will make
it virtually impossible for a just and equitable economic
recovery to occur. Without ecosystems, including an
operable climate, there can be no economy.
Wall Street’s insanity of growth at any cost on a very finite planet, and this
growth’s damage to both the world economy and global
ecosystems, is bad news for already faltering efforts to
craft a new international climate change treaty. Yet,
current global economic difficulties must not stop urgent
ecological measures — like dramatic emission reductions
and natural habitat protection and restoration — necessary
to maintain a habitable Earth. Pledges to cut emissions by
80% by mid-century are utterly meaningless if immediate
concrete measures to cut emissions now and in the mid-term
are abandoned with every bit of economic or other troubles.
The global growth machine is seizing up because it is
hitting ecological and economic limits, and because of its
own greed. Long predicted crises including climate change,
collapsing ecosystems, biological homogenization, economic
decline, abject poverty, over-population, energy scarcity,
extreme weather, food and water shortages, diminished
oceans, political instability and endless resource wars –
are unfolding as expected, and are converging into a new
global economic AND ecological crisis of unprecedented
proportions.
The fundamental root cause of this “ecological bubble” is
that humans and their economies depend upon destroying
ecosystems necessary for all life, to feed and house
themselves. Global ecological sustainability depends
critically upon establishing a steady state economy,
whereby production and meeting basic human needs for all
does not diminish natural capital, and our and other
species’ natural habitats. Whole industries like coal and
ancient forest logging will be eliminated, even as new
opportunities emerge in solar energy and environmental
restoration.
The current economic cooling may offer a welcome respite to
reconsider the growth at any cost madness devouring the
Earth’s life giving ecosystems. Growth in economies, human
populations and resource use turns ecosystems into
resources and then into financial investment papers and
consumption. A year later the consumer products are in the
landfill, the paper wealth may be further over-priced or
just scrap paper, and there are both fewer resources and
ecosystems — but always more people. The ability to live
well based upon long-term steady-state interdependence with
intact, healthy ecosystems and their natural capital is
lost forever.
Humanity’s critical transition to both economic and
ecological sustainability is simply not happening on any
scale. The challenge is how to carry out necessary
environmental policies even as economic growth ends and
consumption plunges, and before a precipitous crash in
either limits future options. Your government must resist
the temptation to liquidate even more life-giving
ecosystems, and jettison sufficient climate policies, to
vainly try to maintain high growth and personal
consumption.
One thing is clear — more unbridled growth based upon
unsustainable resource use will not solve the global
ecological problems associated with unbridled growth and
unsustainable resource use. The human enterprise and each
global citizen’s consumption aspirations must be
right-sized to a scale appropriate to ecosystem limits. It
is time to get back to making honest, good livings from
actually making or doing something of societal value, by
making a living with the land and Earth, and that does not
depend upon liquidating ecological being and financial
speculation.
The Earth is blooming with responses to each of the
symptomatic crises. From relocalized economies to community
gardens, from having fewer children to better educating
those we have, from driving less while living more richly
where we find ourselves, by finding meaning in experience,
knowledge and truth rather than competitive consumption, by
rejecting ancient superstitions for an understanding that
the Earth is alive and sacred — a slowly awakening public
is showing where there is knowledge and will there is hope.
If you look, you can see a New Earth Rising. This new
global dream will stress working to globally protect and
restore core ecological reserves necessary to maintain
ecosystem services, while planting organic gardens and
restoring woodlands locally; promoting incentives and
sanctions to reduce population, while personally reducing
consumption; demanding an end to coal and ancient forest
logging, while resisting greenwash wherever it is found and
refusing to buy all Earth destroying products; and urging
investment to meet the full range of human needs for all,
while personally living rich and simple lives full of
laughter, love and happiness.
I challenge you and other world leaders to not ignore
looming apocalyptic global ecosystem collapse, in a vain
effort to return to unbridled and inequitable economic
growth which caused the problems in the first place.
Climate change is a deadly fact, action cannot be delayed
and its solution will help, not harm the economy.
November 28th, 2008 at 5:41 am
i don’t understand destroying our enviroment for any amount of money…i understand we need to take care of ourselves, but not at the sake of ruining the animals habitats and defacing out beautiful earth. zoos try, but they are still caged animals and i’ve yet to see a mtn top “replinished” or even sown with grass or trees like was promised. I think you are all money hungry and selfish people who only care for yourselves and it will come back to you in one way or another and haunt you.
November 28th, 2008 at 6:50 am
i honestly do not understand where people like mr.blankenship get their information. it is sad and worries me that someone in his position bases his business and nature around his own simple belief system. everyone likes to have money and to have nice things but we must be able to live healthy to enjoy and if we don’t have a healthy enviroment then we can not be healthy. it is balance. we can find this balance if we would try. if everyone would stop trying to show how “right” they are and put that energy to finding a solution maybe then we could have real progress. but for massey that may mean their profits may go down or they may have to change and that is what mr.blankenship apparently can’t handle. global warming is real and i may be a “greeniac” but i truly do love “my” mountains.
November 28th, 2008 at 10:21 am
Blankenship’s ignorance only serves to energize my commitment to a sustainable future, and I imagine it’s the same for many activists other a well. So his big mouth only weakens his position ultimately.
The election was only a step. we need now to redouble our efforts to break the back of corporate hegemony, protect and restore our ecosystems, and replace the current unsustainable economic paradigm with an ecological economics.
November 28th, 2008 at 1:33 pm
I have to say that I am not surprised. It is unfortunate for the state of West Virginia to have such an ignorant and back woods individual that has the public eye…..? OR.. Maybe it is in the State’s favor. I am not sure if he actually realizes that the people of West Virginia and the world are educated, in the know, and on to his game. The tide is turning, and he is feeling the wave starting to crash. That is why he has to speak so negatively. It is out of fear. Just like most of the state in the Coal River Mountain area, he only knows one thing…. COAL Take that away and then what do we do? I know due to the fact that I am from that area. Have we ever thought about thinking out side of the box? Become a world leader in producing green energy? The state does have ample sun light, wind, and flowing rivers……. Great soil (where it has not been shaved down to the bedrock) to grow grass for fuel and etc. As you can see the possibilities are endless…. But, I know, we will stand around and allow you to take all of the mineral resources. You can buy your house in Myrtle Beach while the rest of the people hang by a sycymore limb when the flash flood hits. As I vision you sitting back and watching from your beach front condo sipping your 12 year old scotch and probably saying…. WOW if there were trees and tenured soil that would have nevered happened…. Enjoy it….. The lives of many will be on your shoulders. Sleep well!
November 28th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
By conflating the movement, that stands in the way of his profits ie environmentalism, with the spector of communism,Blankenship is using the oldest far right trick in the book.Unfortunately for him,the scales are falling from the eyes of many Americans,who have seen greed mongers,crush the American dream with the ongoing economic disaster.
As for this twisted extremist ,declaring his opponents atheistic,well its pretty clear that Jesus,would gladly kick this guys ass,for misrepresenting Christianity.
November 29th, 2008 at 4:09 am
Short-term solutions are not what we need now. No true long-term good can be gained from harming the mountain. Thank you.
November 29th, 2008 at 12:57 pm
I may be a crazy greeniak, but this greedy cork soaker should be behind bars…
Didn’t he assult a reporter and buy his local supreme court justices?
November 30th, 2008 at 12:51 pm
I agree with all those letters. The biggest problem with the economy the way it is now is that it is based on waste. Waste of commodities breeds inequality. Tax payer money subsidizes those extractive industries. Hemp would solve some of the landfill, pollution and even food shortage problems. Industrial hemp could provide the basic needs of every human being on the planet if grown right.