Alaska holds West Virginia's answer

For the second time in a month, the nation has turned its eyes to West Virginia and a coal mine tragically converted into a death trap. The governor of the beleaguered state, Joe Manchin, has already come forward and announced plans to travel to Washington, DC and lobby for new safety regulations, according to CNN:

Among the issues he said he intends to address are ensuring that there are ample oxygen stations within mines and making sure rescuers have the means to respond as rapidly as possible.

And while such steps certainly sound like solid legislation, it has also become abundantly clear to a previously naïve nation that the coal mining business of today is scarcely more safe than it was before my generation came about. Indeed, this line of work is beginning to appear marginally more sophisticated than a world once shared with the public by Upton Sinclair, and such is bound to cause no small degree of outrage.

The question that must be asked, however, is if coal mining is a certain necessary evil insofar as this country cannot function without it – and we can't – then why is the government not exploring more attractive alternatives to at least minimize our reliance on coal? Such would surely mean an economic blow to West Virginia and states of the like, but if there was just some one to find alternative energy means within this country, the job loss/gain might well have a sum-zero outcome.

The long term answer is nuclear power and we must pursue that avenue. But in the short term, needs to be a way to help the citizens of this country.

And there, of course, is a way. Congressional Democrats hate it, but it is time for another honest conversation about the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve and the immense oil it holds. The words “untapped resource” have scarcely been better defined and it has become increasingly clear that the Sierra Club-propagated myths about wildlife danger are just that – myths.

There should be – and will be – legislation in response to these disasters and mine safety is certainly the place to start. But if we are serious about addressing our energy-dependency and not playing into the hands of the Saudis, it is high time to honor William Seward's great “folly” in the short term, and return to a world of nuclear power growth in the long term.