Introduction
The coal industry is a large and highly profitable type of business due to the product being an essential energy source. The general direction of the development of the coal industry is to increase open-pit coal mining. The development of new deposits in the eastern regions of the country is planned to be carried out using new technological schemes. An effective transport-free system with excavator transshipment of overburden into dumps will be developed further mainly by walking excavators of large unit capacity. A special place in the park of walking excavators on sections should be occupied by draglines with buckets with a large capacity.
The most efficient mining machines are rotary excavators. In difficult geological and climatic conditions, rotary excavators with high hourly productivity are widely used. The transition to in-line technology opens up the possibility of creating and introducing rotary excavators at new large open pits with maximum productivity. The main focus lies on the further increase in in-line production, based on the use of automated systems of machines and complexes, the conveyor transport of coal, and overburden.
However, in some locations, such as West Virginia, the prevalent methodology of mining the coal is the mountain top removal method. In essence, the elevated rocky areas and mountains with coal get stripped in a spiral fashion in order to allow excavators to be able to climb the elevation up and down (“What Is Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining?”). This type of mining process causes a number of environmental and health-related issues due to excessive pollution in surrounding locations. The main reason is the fact that the waste products wash down through the rivers or rain into nearby water reserves.
The local ecosystem consuming waste products gets poisoned, which leads to a significant reduction in the number of species per acre. In addition, the poisoned water and air deal substantial damage to local people leading to various respiratory diseases. It is important to note the fact that the given problem cannot be blamed only for coal corporations because they, as business entities, seek out profit due to the demand on the market. The latter factor is primarily driven by a consumer who needs the products of the coal industry. Another party involved in the pollution problem is legislators because it is their key responsibility to control and set boundaries for both consumers and corporations. Therefore, it is mainly legislators’ fault that such disasters occurred in West Virginia.
Representation
The local legislators of West Virginia failed to properly represent the interests of the people, which led to the mentioned environmental and health issues. Every decision-making official was elected by people to represent their interests in all regards. In addition, their accountability factor is heavily reliant on citizens being aware of their actions because the legislators can be voted out due to their failures. The given theoretical description only states the idea of how the system is supposed to work. Evidently, any official can be influenced by their self-interest and corporations in order to gain mutual rewards, which is present in practice.
Therefore, the media coverage should not be solely focused on corporations, but also raise awareness on responsible officials, who put their self-interests over citizens’ interests. The latter means that an official failed to represent his or her voters, and media outlets need to illuminate these incidents by also demonstrating adverse environmental effects, which were derived from such actions.
In addition, an official found guilty of cooperating with the corporation for their mutual benefit must be voted out. One should not defend such cooperation by stating that a politician needs funding from the companies in order to outcompete their opponents. The main reason is the fact that ballot victory is only possible if US citizens do not vote for the politician. Therefore, it is the legislator’s sole duty to set strict boundaries within which a corporation can operate.
This should be supplemented by harsh punishment measures, such as heavy taxation, in order to keep these large businesses in check. The overall attitude should be similar to the government’s approach towards small business owners, who lose their business if they will be conducting wrongdoing. The given strict point of view can make corporations significantly more reluctant to cause widespread environmental damage, which leads to suffering among local citizens.
Wastes
One of the primary concerns regarding the coal industry is the fact that the mining process produces large quantities of waste products. Such wastes need to be relocated to special zones, where the consequential damage is minimal. However, there were incidents where the coal corporations failed to properly dispose of the waste products, which damaged not only the local area but several neighboring states. The failure to follow the strict guidelines must be met with harsh punishment measures in order to prevent that such actions will occurring in the future. In addition, the price for the damage caused by these incidents must be paid by the businesses and not taxpayers.
Involved Parties
It is highly important to note the fact that business entities, such as corporations, are primarily driven by profit. This means that although they have moral and ethical obligations to be aware of their actions and avoid environmentally damaging procedures, a corporation might not adhere to these notions if it is allowed to do so. One should not forget or dismiss that any business entity will prioritize the profit over other matters, such as ethics and morals, due to the money and assets being the essence of a company.
The highly damaging mountain top removal approach in the coal industry in West Virginia was used solely due to the fact that it is more profitable than conventional safer methods. Although these businesses are the primary causes of these environmental pollutions and health issues in the local area, they should not be blamed. This also applies to the coal corporation’s employees, who are only involved in order to make a living. Their actions are only dictated by the orders given to them by the upper management of the company.
Another major component of the systematic problem is consumers, who are generating the overall demand for the products of the coal corporations. This demand is driven by a multitude of needs, such as energy, which means that consumers do not know the inherently intent or wish to damage the environment. They will shift towards any product which costs lower and has a higher quality than other alternatives.
The last central piece of the given puzzle is legislators, who are obliged to regulate the actions of all business entities. This includes the coal corporations, which means that either the company caused the environmental damage due to the lack of restrictions or non-severity of punishment. The latter factors can be influenced by the legislators, who possess the power to set guidelines and standards of practices regarding every aspect of the coal mining process. In addition, legislators are able to enforce punitive measures and determine their severity, which means that they are responsible for the given environmental catastrophe.
Anthropocentrism
Anthropocentrism is a concept and point of view that puts a human in the center of everything. The adoption of the given concept is one of the reason why the coal corporation is eager to adopt highly damaging practices, such as mountain top removal. Anthropocentrism has been the dominant worldview of humanity for many centuries. A person was opposed to all other creatures on earth and was taken for granted that only the interests and needs of man are important, all other creatures have no independent value. This worldview, in short, assumes that everything is created and intended for a man (Kopnina et al. 114).
The philosophy and religion of the West supported the belief in the uniqueness of man and his place in the center of the universe, in his rights to the life of all other living beings and the planet itself. The emergence of anthropocentrism as a worldview concept dates back to the ancient era. In ancient Greece, there were several philosophical schools that recognized the validity of inequality between people, in particular, slavery, and saw a gap between people and animals, that is, it was believed that animals and nature were created for the good of man. This argues that plants and animals do not exist for their own sake, but the necessities of a person. That is, wordless animals are deprived of reason, and therefore, it is natural that they are used by man for his benefit.
Currently, anthropocentrism is beginning to be seen as a negative form of worldview. Anthropocentrism continues to represent one of the varieties of discriminatory views of people who do not meet the requirements of true ethics (Shoreman-Ouimet and Kopnina 7). If the lowest moral and spiritual level of humanity was answered by such a position as egocentrism, which is close to racism, nationalism, then anthropocentrism is not far from these views – considering it legitimate to satisfy only human interests and do it at the expense of other species.
Anthropocentrism has shown itself to be untenable both as a philosophy, and as a scientific approach to determining the status of a person in the natural environment, and as a practical guide to action, justifying any actions of a person in relation to other living forms (Schwagerl and Jones 109). Anthropocentrism oriented society towards maximum consumerism, that is, a man considered the natural environment, animals as his pantry, as an inexhaustible source of material wealth.
The development of technology, the theft of natural resources, the destruction of animals and vegetation, environmental pollution led to the depletion of natural resources and put humanity in the face of the global environmental crisis (Schwagerl and Jones 108). For humanity, it became apparent that new worldviews were needed that would not oppose man to nature.
Intrinsic and Instrumental Values
It is important to understand that anthropocentricity has led to the emergence of viewing nature through the lens of instrumental values. Politician seeks to remain in the office for long periods of time by acquiring funds from large companies and disregarding nature. However, people and corporations should adopt an intrinsic value system, where a person is considered a part of nature (McKibben 78). It is also stated that an intrinsic value system reinforces morality and ethics (Mcshane 44).
Thus, he or she needs to view a mountain as a habitat and an essential component of an ecosystem. Such an approach will inevitably lead to the fact that business entities, legislators, and consumers will be more aware of the consequences of aggressive consumerism and low-cost production. In addition, waste products will also be minimized because an excessive amount of waste products harms the environment.
Plausible Solutions
In order to improve the quality of coal and reduce environmental damage, the energy strategy provides for the widespread use of the most advanced methods for the preparation and enrichment of coal, the transition to an international quality management system at coal enterprises, and the implementation of appropriate measures to ensure environmental safety. In accordance with this strategy, ecological recovery of coal regions can begin by introducing, as a pilot, energy, and resource-saving environmentally friendly technologies to refine substandard reserves in already established technogenic deposits, since the possibility of implementing purely ecological projects, for example, on the restoration of bulk technogenic massifs, and all the more so for their deep processing, without being tied to highly profitable coal mining, remains a financially impossible task.
By virtue of the environmental problems identified during the operation of a coal mine, the formation of a set of scientifically based measures in the form of a dynamic environmental and economic system should be done at the level of the coal mining industry. There is a need for the implementation of progressive production, technical, organizational, managerial, and resource-management decisions in order to achieve maximum efficiency of environmental activities (Chen et al. 1132).
The physical and social effect in the development of natural resources is an urgent task. Harmoniously sustainable environmental, economic, and social development of the coal industry should consist of increasing the efficiency of environmental protection activities (Chen et al. 1140). It will entail an increase in the level of environmental safety and the socio-economic efficiency of coal production and use as primary energy carriers with a proper ratio of different types of fuel within the development of natural resources.
The most important components of measures to improve the efficiency of environmental activities are methods for developing mineral deposits, the progressiveness of the technological processes of their extraction, enrichment, and processing. Each of the elements of this cycle should be evaluated in terms of its impact on environmental activities. Determining the economic factors affecting the effectiveness of environmental protection, the author selected a system of economic indicators that allow a diversified assessment of the activities of a mining enterprise and the effectiveness of environmental protection (Xu et al. 526).
In addition to direct economic indicators such as profit and the average annual cost of fixed assets, a number of environmental and economic indicators were used, such as fees for the use of land, water resources, for emissions of pollutants and waste storage, which directly depend on the perfection of coal mining technology, technical re-equipment of the most efficient coal mining enterprises and the quality of reserves in coal deposits, and also have a significant impact on environmental performance.
The choice of options for improving the efficiency of environmental activities in a coal mine requires solving a complex of peculiar, complex problems and taking into account a large number of industrial, technical, economic, social, territorial, and industry factors. All of them are closely linked with each other, and comprehensively affect the way to increase the efficiency of environmental protection in a coal mine.
In order to achieve the given goals, it is proposed to use the method of principal components of factor analysis, which makes it possible to evaluate the contribution of each factor to the total set of agreed expert estimates and the total variance. An analysis of the level of influence of factors on the choice of preferred options for improving the efficiency of environmental activities allows us to conclude that the profit made by the mining enterprise and investments in new green technologies are the most significant factors for all areas of increasing the effectiveness of environmental activities (Xu et al. 528). The use of modern and advanced methods of coal enrichment is a determining factor in increasing the efficiency of environmental protection activities both in the direction of water resources and in the direction of land resources.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it is important to understand that the mountain top removal process is highly environmentally unfriendly, and it damages surrounding ecosystems and people. Although the issue involves a number of parties, such as consumers and corporations, legislators are the ones who are guilty and blameworthy. The main reason is the fact that they are obliged to represent the interests of the people by regulating corporate entities and setting strict boundaries for their activities. They are also able to impose punitive measures on violators in order to create an incentive to be more friendly with nature. The main underlying cause of the problem is anthropocentrism, which puts a human in the center of everything, and it severely affects prioritization order. Therefore, all parties should adopt an intrinsic value system, where nature is seen not as a source of material goods but as a part of humanity.
Works Cited
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Schwagerl, Christian, and Lucy Renner Jones. The Anthropocene: The Human Era and How It Shapes Our Planet. Synergetic Press, 2014.
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“What Is Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining?” iLoveMountains. Web.
Xu, Jiuping, et al. “Ecological Coal Mining Based Dynamic Equilibrium Strategy to Reduce Pollution Emissions and Energy Consumption.” Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 167, 2017, pp. 514-529.