Coal Mining and Development in British Columbia and Appalachia

• In Event: 473 - Section on Political Economy of the World-System Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 02. Extraction

Abstract

Mountaintop removal coal mining in Appalachia has been increasingly criticized for its negative impacts on the environment, human health, and local communities. However, the same mining technology has been employed to mine coal in southeastern British Columbia for more than four decades with far fewer negative environmental and social impacts and generally much greater economic benefits for local communities. This paper presents a comparison of these two cases utilizing the raw materialist theoretical perspective from the world-systems framework in order to analyze the differences between the two regions. The major causes of the differences identified in this analysis are in terms of natural characteristics of the rock in the Canadian Rockies versus the Appalachian mountains, differing government social and environmental policies and enforcement in Canada versus the U.S., the very different historical uses and legacies of these uses in the two contexts, with far less extensive and less negative historical legacies in Canada in comparison with Appalachia, and differences in the relationships between these coal peripheries and the major economic powers in the world economy.

Author

• Paul S. Ciccantell, Western Michigan University