Big Coal -- Jeff Goodell: A Book Review

Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future Jeff Goodell

Houghton Mifflin Company, 2006

Being from the heart of Appalachian coal country, I couldn't pass by a book titled Big Coal.  Knowing a little bit about the Bush administration's rewording and minimizing of the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, and neutering the Environmental Protection Agency, the subtitle, The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, was a clincher for me.  I just had to read it.

This dark tale begins in China, where coal is firing their rapid industrialization, is key to the rapidity of their economic growth in the past decade.  But the coal being burned to produce the energy for this industrialization is not only dirty and the plants unfiltered, the conditions wherein the Chinese miners work are criminally negligent.  Jeff Goodell paints a picture of cities filled with tangible, dirty, smoke-filled air reminiscent of coal towns and cities of turn-of-the-century (20th) industrial towns.  He paints a picture of working conditions in the mines that makes America's mining operations look heaven-sent. And the World Health Organization estimates that 355,000 people die a year in northern China and Korea from coal-related deaths (respiratory disorders and infections, mining deaths, production accidents, housefires). And then he completely covers the black with green and gold, for the industry is extremely lucrative for those who own the extraction companies.  And, finally, Goodell throws on a heavy coat of whitewash, so heavy the green, gold, and black disappear, the artistic result of Big Coal's amazing campaign to not only clean up their image but to appear necessary and innocuous, saviors of our lifestyle.  But that's all background. 

Big Coal is nothing if not a portrait of a bleach-boned, skeletal figure in black, a scathing endictment of an industry powered by greed and fueled by gluttonous consumption.  Goodell tells us that we are in a vicious addictive cycle, no better able to lose our dependence on coal than we are on oil.  Partly because coal is still a cheap source of energy.  Partly because a greedy, powerful industry has embarked on a propaganda campaign to minimize the ugliness of the industry, from dangerous mining to filthy air (where do you think smog comes from?).  Partly because of humanity's (at the moment, mostly America's) need for cheap energy to power their microwaves and recharge their iPods.  But most of all, it is the political power of the industry, its affiliates, and its supporters that ensure the perpetuation of Big Coal. 

From China to Wyoming to West Virginia, Goodell exposes the industry's seamier sides (pun not intended) and the politics, especially the Bush administration's war on corporate regulations and protective policies, that has made Big Coal more powerful than ever.  He also makes you think, which is the sign of any good book.  But Goodell is fair in his final assessment of the Big Coal situation, pointing his finger at Big Coal while laying a good deal of the blame on America's (and fast becoming the world's) excessive need to maintain lifestyles encased in energy.  Big Coal is an excellent expository as well as a cautionary tale, from global warming to mining safety standards to regulatory politicking, and reveals a Catch-22 situation that is as important to the individual as it is the world.