Neil Stahl: Coal country’s problem

Your headline “Coal country wary of Clinton’s pledge to help” on your Aug. 31 Focus section was misleading. Coal country does indeed have a big problem, and it’s lucky one candidate is pledging some help. Its problem is bigger than any likely, help but that’s not Hillary Clinton’s fault. It hitched its wagon to coal.

Over many decades it cost them lives and miners’ health but delivered jobs. Now we’ve learned we can’t afford to burn coal. N.C. learned it the hard way, with all our coal ash problems and the various health problems from breathing coal smoke, but the biggest problem is all that CO2 it puts into the atmosphere and the hotter and wilder weather that’s causing. The rising ocean will eat away at North Carolina’s very geography this century.

Coal isn’t coming back despite Donald Trump’s promises. It mustn’t. Retraining and moving and imaginative use of mountain resources will all help, and President Clinton will assist. President Trump would bluster and do no good at all.

This story was originally published September 1, 2016 at 3:51 PM with the headline "Neil Stahl: Coal country’s problem."