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China signals switch in reserves away from dollar
Journal Inquirer, Manchester, Connecticut
Thursday, January 5, 2006
http://www.journalinquirer.com/site/news.cfm?
newsid=15875681&BRD=985&PAG=461&dept_id=565859&rfi=6
West Virginians who want to earn good money but don't have a college
degree have only two choices, the Associated Press reported this
week from the coal mine disaster in Tallmansville: "You either have
to cut it from the wooded hillsides or gouge it from the earth."
Everybody knows that mining is dangerous; there are even songs about
the danger. But as it turns out, cutting a living from the wooded
hillsides is even more dangerous than mining, according to the U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has determined that logging
produces the most fatalities per 100,000 people employed. Mining
isn't even in second place; that rank belongs to fishermen, with
airplane pilots and structural metal workers ranking third and
fourth. Miners and drillers rank fifth, roofers sixth.
Police work and firefighting get respect as they should but they
don't rank in even the top 10 most dangerous occupations. A cop is
more likely to die in an ordinary traffic accident than on the job.
Mining may have the reputation as most dangerous occupation because
mine accidents can be spectacular and fatal to groups of people
while the fatalities in the other dangerous occupations tend to
occur individually and so are less noticed even when they are more
numerous.
But mining is dangerous enough and, like the other dangerous
occupations, not appreciated enough by a prosperous country that,
having shifted so much from manual work to office work, seems to
have lost track of where things really come from. (Contrary to
popular belief, everything doesn't start at Wal-Mart; that's the end
of the line, not the beginning.)
Coal is a good example of the lack of appreciation for what are
called the extractive industries, especially when those industries
are considered from Connecticut's perspective.
More than half the country's electricity is generated from coal, and
the recent sharp increase in the prices of oil and natural gas has
made coal more competitive and has strengthened the coal-mining
industry. As a result, coal mines are expanding or reopening in
Appalachia and elsewhere. Since most oil and much natural gas used
in the United States are imported and since the United States has
more coal than the Middle East has oil, the strengthening of the
coal-mining industry will be good for the country if it underwrites
the technology necessary for the cleaner burning of coal and the
conversion of coal to other fuels, and if it underwrites better
compensation and safer working conditions for miners.
Yes, the coal-mining industry's job-safety record is not as good as
those of, say, Connecticut's two biggest industries, government and
insurance, and the Tallmansville mine seems to have violated safety
standards more than the average mine. But then the mine's current
owner purchased it out of bankruptcy only a few months ago, figuring
that higher energy prices might make it profitable again. And even
under the best conditions danger will always be inherent in mining.
So before Connecticut looks down its nose at coal and its problems,
the state may want to consider the 22 percent increase in the
electric rates it started paying this month, an increase caused by
state government's adamant refusal to diversify electrical
generation options here. Take coal out of the national energy
equation and electric rates in Connecticut would go even higher and
get rate payers as mad as someone who likes to consider himself an
environmentalist and then discovers that a wind farm or
hydroelectric dam is proposed nearby.
Nobody who flips on a light switch or a big-screen television set or
who turns the key in the ignition of his car thinks of the coal
miners or the oil and gas drillers.
Suburbanites admiring their new outdoor deck are thinking of summer
cookouts, not the lumberjacks who play tag with hundred-foot trees
for a living.
Anyone cruising the supermarket or a restaurant menu is thinking of
dinner, not of the fishermen or pesticide-dusted migrant farm
workers who may have made it possible, unless maybe he's planning to
watch "The Perfect Storm" or "The Grapes of Wrath" on his big-screen
TV after dinner.
For that matter, how much respect does the pizza delivery guy get,
even though his job is both poorly compensated and a recent addition
to the most-dangerous list, ranking above roofers, construction
workers, police officers, and firefighters?
Logging, mining, fishing, agriculture generally -- the extractive
industries -- are the most dangerous industries, and for feeding,
housing, clothing, and carrying the country they are largely taken
for granted when they aren't simply scorned.
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