For environmentalists and coal miners to join together on a regular basis here in West Virginia to work for a common cause would be a revolutionary development in state, local and national politics -- which is exactly why it needs to happen.

This is a moment ripe with opport- unity for greens and miners to assist each other to their mutual benefit; a benefit, which, by being greater than the sum of its parts, would also strengthen the global movement for democracy, and for economic and environmental justice.

What unites greens and miners particularly at this time is that they both face the same common enemy: corporate greed. What has brought urgency to facing this common foe has been the rapid growth over the past decade of centralized corporate and financial power, which has now reached a point that threatens to override the demo- cratic sovereignty of people worldwide.

When a corporatist like George W. Bush seems to be on better terms (even soulmates) with the butchers of Chechnya and Tianenmen Square than with our traditional European allies, it should engage the rapt attention of every thinking citizen.

No one should know better how modern fascism works than the people of West Virginia -- the original prototype for Third World economic colonialism. At its most fundamental level, fascism is the "binding together" (from the Latin word, fasces) of government and private interests. And from the moment this industrial colony was stolen from Virginia in 1863, state government has almost invariably served the interests of out-of-state property owners and corporations. This, of course, is to the detriment of the native population, who share with victims of fascism everywhere the common trait of adapting to their oppression with mutely cynical resignation, punctuated by only occasional uprisings.

Life, after all, must go on.

A number of other developments, political and scientific, have reached a stage that further unites the interests of coal miners and enviros.

Foremost is global warming, which has transformed the political equation over the past year. The coal industry did whatever it could to elect Bush president, and certainly helped him carry West Virginia; but Bush’s stance on the Kyoto Treaty has isolated the US from the international community. As it turns out, this will have adverse conseq- uences for American businesses and workers -- thus neutralizing any rationale for support- ing Bush’s environmental policies, which have damaged him domestically.

Global warming is also having an impact on miners and their families in more disastrous ways. Only a minority don’t yet realize that there’s no longer any such thing as normal weather: it’s either drought or deluge. This realization has been hammered home in West Virginia in tragically dramatic fashion. In fact, the efforts of people from the Highlands Conservancy and other environ- mental groups to help folks who have had their lives disrupted by the flooding is one of the most genuine ways we can express that, contrary to the exploiter-promoted myth, environmentalists really do care about people and their daily lives.

The fact that this recent unpreced- ented flooding physically illustrates some of the arguments that environmentalists have been making about the dangers of moun- taintop removal -- this practice significantly contributing to the flood damage -- is already changing minds in communities across the state about giving the coal and timber industries everything they want, without restriction.

The United Mine Workers (UMW) actually has a history of opposing both strip mining and mountaintop removal, though usually for different reasons than environmentalists. The union was an early opponent of those practices primarily because, by being more technology intensive, they lessened the need for skilled union labor. The legendary John L. Lewis fought mechanization in the mines for the same reason.

But ultimately, it has been against labor interests for the UMW to abandon its opposition to strip mining and mountaintop removal. UMW membership today is only a fraction of what it was a few decades ago. And what principally maintains the Union’s power today is its unholy alliance with the coal companies -- a co-dependency which also has the paradoxical effect of reducing the union’s organizing and bargaining power. In other words, by opposing environmental regulations, the union is really at cross purposes with itself.

This is an argument we greens need to make to miners. It’s not that they don’t already know it. But they are blinded by the threat of being employed by a dinosaur industry in long decline, an industry now under renewed global attack as the scientific evidence of the ecological damage it inflicts on our earth, water and atmosphere rapidly accumulates. Unfortunately, it’s also one of the last private sector industries to employ union labor, in an economy that otherwise has seen a 9 percent decline in real average wages over the past thirty years, while union mine jobs steadily disappeared. They’re in a fight for survival.

To our credit, environmentalists have openly acknowledged that miners will suffer the brunt of the cutbacks as a dangerous fossil fuel industry is necessarily decom- missioned. With that in mind, and recog- nizing that coal will be used for the immediate future, we have also supported continued underground mining and creating other good-paying jobs by developing alternative energy industries, doing a better job cleaning up abandoned mine sites, and reclaiming the land in a more productive manner. We support fully protecting workers’ rights, now and throughout the transition to a sustainable energy future.

We could do more to connect labor and environmental agendas. For example, we are on the same side on the trade agreements that have been the focus of the anti-global- ization protests, where workers march with turtles against negotiations from which both are shut out. "Fast track" authority for the president to negotiate international trade agreements is also bad for both labor and the environment.

Although greens can be rightly accused of having occasionally downplayed the economic dimensions of environmental issues, labor, with its single-minded focus on capitalist economics and the business/labor dialectic, has often tuned out the connections between environmental and labor and other human rights issues, thereby weakening their analysis with blind spots.

For instance, despite the open alliance with greens on free trade agreements, the home page of the AFL-CIO website doesn’t contain a single direct link to environmental issues. What is additionally odd about this is how often issues of development and industry growth are routinely characterized as "jobs versus environment." You’d think the nation’s premiere labor organization would want to help its members better understand the controversy when they check in for information on the website. A big part of the problem, of course, is that leadership on environmental questions has been delegated to the union most directly affected: the UMW. And so far, UMW’s official position doesn’t get much more radical than "clean coal technology."

However, there are nuggets of awareness even in the UMW Journal where greens can find common ground with miners. "Despite tougher air standards," a recent issue admits, "emissions from coal-fired plants still include components that contribute to smog, acid rain and global warming." The concept of "clean coal" is in itself an admission that fossil fuel emissions endanger us all. By nurturing those points of connection, and appealing to miners’ common sense and human concerns, we can help enlarge the perspective of labor on the effect of environmental problems on worker issues.

And by framing environmental issues in ways that directly address the concerns of the labor movement, we will further educate ourselves about the effect of economics on the environment. With hope and commitment, we can move beyond the polarization that has crippled our democratic institutions, and made both labor and greens less effective than we could be if we worked together.