Wendell Berry Quotes
You cannot affirm the power plant and condemn the smokestack, or affirm the smoke and condemn the cough.
Wendell Berry, Farmer, Writer & Critic, The Gift of the Good Land, 1981
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
There are those who worry that we will run out of oil. However, as Khosla observes, the more immediate danger is the pollution of the planet’s air supply by burning fossil fuels like oil in large volumes.
This quotation on the surface appears to be a clear summary of the scientifically measured negative aspects to coal. However, it was an extremely bitter political quotation. The reason was that West Virginia and the other parts of Appalachia depend on coal for employment—jobs for the residents in a poverty-stricken area where there are few other potential sources for employment. Coal is also a key economic component of the economy in Wyoming. These states regard the reduction of coal as an energy source as one of the most serious political threats to their states and the treat it accordingly. West Virginia has Democratic Senators and congressmen from Appalachia. Wyoming has Republicans. Both exert enormous pressure on their Congressional Party leadership and the White House. With the country and Congress split at the time, Republicans had control of the House, and Democrats, the Senate and the Presidency—by very narrow margins so the leaderships cannot offend anyone in Congress. The result is that there was almost total silence about the huge coal pollution problem, and even in the second decade of the 21st century, where shale natural Gas was extractable in sufficient quantities to totally replace Coal as a fuel source, few in Congress or the administration ever even spoke of adopting a national policy to this effect, much less passed any legislation. During this period many Americans sickened and died as a result of coal every year with no end in sight.
At the time this article was written coal was being phased out in most of the country but not as the result of any political actions. The new technologies of producing shale oil and fracking had driven down the price of natural gas and oil, making coal the most expensive fuel alternative so the market place was finally doing what the politicians would not do. Ironically, the conservative politicians from coal producing states like West Virginia and Kentucky, who would normally say that government should always defer to the marketplace, then called for government action to protect the coal industry from the marketplace.
Many argue that they are hardly reflected at all. The reason is the governments pay for much of the real cost and spread the cost over its taxpayers. Some costs are not monetary—premature deaths from pollution or corruption in petroeconomic corrupt states. People just suffer.
Wendell Erdman Berry is an American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer. He is an elected member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers, a recipient of The National Humanities Medal, and the Jefferson Lecturer for 2012. He is also a 2013 Fellow of The American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Berry was named the recipient of the 2013 Richard C. Holbrooke Distinguished Achievement Award. On January 28, 2015, he became the first living writer to be inducted into the Kentucky Writers Hall of Fame.
