The real audience for the debate between coal baron Don Blankenship and conservationist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. was not the hundreds who packed the audience at the University of Charleston.
Those people – coal miners and environmentalists, politicians and local residents – heard nothing new in Kennedy’s denunciation of mountaintop removal mining nor in Blankenship’s defense of the practice.
The real audience extends far beyond West Virginia and central Appalachia; it’s the millions of Americans who don’t know a strip mine from a slurry impoundment, but whose anger or acceptance of mountaintop mining could tip the political balance one way or the other.
A hand-picked crowd of 950 heard the outspoken Massey Energy chief and the environmental lawyer from America’s most famous political clan debate for about 90 minutes Thursday night. Hundreds more watched on closed-circuit TV in a campus gym.
The debate over mountaintop mining has raged in West Virginia for years. But this was a chance to reach millions of unconverted Americans via the Internet and many more through the dozens of media outlets present – including three documentary film crews.
"I think Don came out ahead, but it’s not going to change any minds, unfortunately," Massey Energy miner Jeff Johnson said.
Both men made their cases succinctly, and lightly traded verbal jabs, accusing the other of being fuzzy on facts or unfair in rhetoric.
For Blankenship, mountaintop mining puts food on the table and mortgage checks in the mail. For Kennedy, it defaces majestic scenery, pollutes water and shatters the quiet country existence of people who’ve called the mountains home for generations.
"The two primary concerns have to be the security of the country and improving the quality of life throughout the country and the world," Blankenship said.
Poverty was a formative experience for Blankenship, who has memories of trudging to an outhouse on frigid winter nights.
Tim Huber and Tom Breen, abc News, January 22, 2010
