Montana cannot strip-mine its way to prosperity

 As the 2012 elections approach, candidates are offering ideas to improve Montana’s economy and quality of life. Some are hoping to hook their carts to expanded strip mining of coal. But the economic benefits from coal are an illusion.

Coal does not create economic value, it destroys it. So says a recent study published in the prestigious American Economic Review.

Authored by professors from Yale and Middlebury College, the article – “Environmental Accounting for Pollution in the United States Economy” – concludes that damages to human health and the environment from coal actually exceed the economic value generated by burning it. The study’s conclusion is remarkable because it only considers the impacts of air pollution from coal; that is, it does not consider water and soil pollution from coal, which can be substantial (consider Colstrip).

How then do coal companies generate private profit from strip-mining and burning coal? They don’t pay for all of coal’s impacts on our health and environment. So, in effect, Americans subsidize coal companies’ profits, paying with decreased life expectancy, increased asthma attacks, and lost work days caused by air pollution from coal. These are real costs. And while the coal companies should pay for this harm visited on the public, they don’t. We – the people – do.

Rather than support an industry that can only pay its way by sickening our citizens and savaging our state, political hopefuls might consider viable alternatives: energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. They don’t sicken people, and they don’t run out.