Well, I guess Mr. Peabody's coal train ain't a gonna haul Vincennes away:
ST. LOUIS (AP) — Peabody Energy Corp., one of the world's biggest private-sector coal companies, said Wednesday that it has ended production and will permanently close one of its mines in Indiana, citing continued soft market conditions.
[. . .]
Like other coal companies, Peabody has struggled this year as utilities switched to cheap natural gas from coal to generate electricity. Natural gas prices are the lowest in years because of huge supplies from booming production. And the mild winter across much of the nation didn't put much of a dent in the gas surplus.
Looks like the natural gas boom is going to finish what President Obama's war on coal started. Who can argue with cheaper and better for the environment? There should still be a place for coal in an "all of the above" energy policy, but that place might not be as big as some might have hoped and some might have feared.
My father was a coal miner, which put food on the table in my childhood, and he contracted black lung, which took him away from me prematurely. To say I have mixed feelings about coal is to greatly understate the complexity of my emotions about it.
Anyway, listen to one of my favorite John Prine songs. I appreciate his apparent distaste for what sounds like strip mining by "Mr. Peabody," but there again there's a different way to loook at it. It's a safer way to get coal for people like my father and one uncle who died in a cave-in and another whose back was broken. And reclamation projects often replace the stripped away hills with fertile farm land.
