The question isn’t whether anyone can (or should) bring back coal mining jobs. It is about taking a hard look at ourselves and realizing the important lesson that miners can teach us.
Put aside the photo-op for a moment and take a good look at the coal miners behind President Trump as he signed two days ago his first executive order on climate change — his first attempt at making good on his campaign promise to bring back thousands of lost mining jobs in rural America.
What do you see?
Surrounded by miners from Rosebud Mining, President Donald Trump signs the Energy Independence Executive Order at the Environmental Protection Agency Headquarters in Washington on March 28, 2017 (Reuters/Carlos Barria)
I see humility, the natural shyness of people used to working far from anyone’s eyes. So far underground that we don’t know they even exist. But they do, and we owe them a lot. Because despite a sharp decline in recent years, coal, the U.S. Energy Information Administration found last year, continues to be the largest single fuel used for electricity generation worldwide.
So the question isn’t whether these jobs are coming back; they are not. And I know this first hand, having grown up in a post-coal era French town in the ’70s. No Eiffel Tower there. Not much in terms of landmarks, except perhaps for those big slag heaps, testaments to the city’s industrial past and its coal mines. A source of pride for some and an embarrassment for others, these remnants of another time remind us that what we do and the choices we make have an impact long after we’re gone. And that is the essence of the debate on climate change: When will we stop sacrificing people and the environment on the altar of the economy? Because, make no mistake, coal miners aren’t rich; they never were and never will be.
“Whether I like it or not, there’s coal flowing in my veins. It’s in all of us. We all have coal on our hands.”
Both my grandfathers worked in coal mines. They gave their lives to it. They were immigrants, lured to a foreign land by tales of a better life — a brighter future. In the end they didn’t live on much and left behind even less. But they gave us something far more important: the irresistible drive to never give up. And I can’t help but see it in those miners in that picture.
John Adams once wrote to his wife, Abigail, that he had to study politics and war so that their grandchildren could one day have a right to study art. My grandfathers spent the best of their years down in the stifling heat of the galleries covered in soot so that their children and grandchildren could one day enjoy and breathe the pure air. And so I write speeches for a living, my hands never dirty, or so I hope. I’ve been the ‘voice’ of several corporate and government leaders, in the U.S. and abroad; at one point I even wrote for the executives of one of the world’s biggest oil companies, which made me question whether I was betraying my own people.
“We can look away and pretend the miners don’t exist. We can also perpetuate the stereotypes and divide an already divided society.”
Of course my grandparents never had to ask themselves those kinds of questions. If the challenge of our time is to protect the world, theirs was to rebuild it. The country needed energy — lots of it. And like for the war that had just ended, it also needed young people — children, really. “As we were going deeper underground,” one of them recalled, “I was getting closer to my horse, the smell and humid heat of its hair helped me to be less afraid and reminded me of outside daylight images, of the youth I was losing.”
When miners went on strike on October 4, 1948 (here in Saint-Etienne), the French government sent more than 50 000 soldiers throughout France. Hundreds of miners were arrested and sentenced to jail. Thousands lost their jobs and many were killed. © Fonds Léon Leponce — AMSE
Most has been written about the horrific working conditions in the mines — conditions that would lead French miners to revolt and for which the government would not hesitate to use force. The same thing would happen years later in the UK when Margaret Thatcher quashed the miners’ strike, those she called “the enemy within.” The same thing is happening today in Russia, India, and China.
But this enemy helped build most of what we today take for granted. That coal spurred a three-decade period of economic growth in France and other industrial countries. It gave my parents what my grandparents never had: a chance to go to school. Not for long, mind you. If you were the child of a miner, why would you want to become ‘somebody’? People from West Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama know exactly what I mean.
“Our legacy will be different than theirs; we will be judged less on how hard we worked, but how hard we tried.”
As we debate what needs to be done to protect our world and our way of living, let’s pause for a moment and think about what our parents and grandparents have given us. Our legacy will be different than theirs; we will be judged less on how hard we worked, but how hard we tried.
Image credit: Kuni Takahashi/Bloomberg
Whether I like it or not, there’s coal flowing in my veins. It’s in all of us. We all have coal on our hands. We can look away and pretend the miners don’t exist. We can also perpetuate the stereotypes and divide an already divided society. Addressing poverty in French inner cities, a piece published in French newspaper Le Monde took my hometown as an example, making a cheap use of clichés and bad puns. But what makes good headlines doesn’t necessarily move the debate in the right direction.
Let’s face our past. What people like my grandfathers gave us is more than coal — more than any form of energy will ever do. They teach us that overcoming difficulties is all about taking risks, working hard, and seeing all that our planet has to offer. Not a bad lesson as we grapple with the single most important and defining challenge of our generation.
To Joseph and Hippolyte.
Christophe Larouer has been developing thought leadership and strategic narratives for high-level government and business leaders for over a decade. (The content of this communication is entirely my own and does not reflect the opinions of or endorsement by any federal agency or the government as a whole.)