On Tuesday, Jan. 22, President Bush came to West Virginia to tout his energy policy as vital to national security and job creation. Representatives of the Highlands Conservancy, Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and Coal River Mountain Watch assembled along Bush’s motorcade route to strongly disagree.

Our signs told the story: "Bush Energy Plan = Mountain Misery!" "It’s Not Patriotic to Destroy Mountains, Communities and Ecosystems!" "Bush, visit Sylvester-Breathe Our "Clean" Air!" "Coal = No Money, No Jobs- Example: McDowell County!"

"It seems like Bush does not have the intestinal fortitude to visit the coalfields and see the devastating effects of what the coal industry and his energy policy are doing to the people of West Virginia," said Julia Bonds with the Coal River Mountain Watch. "Monster machines have replaced tens of thousands of coal miners and those monsters are flattening West Virginia’s mountains, destroying our forests and streams and scattering mountain communities to the coal-dust laden winds. Where are the jobs in that? Where’s the security in that?"

"I think it is very telling that President Bush came to Walker Machinery, of all the private or public places he could have visited in West Virginia," said Frank Young, president of The West Virginia Highlands Conservancy.

"Walker supplies to the surface mining industry those big trucks, giant end loaders, and other equipment used to rip apart our beautiful West Virginia mountains. Walker is the public relations mouthpiece for the mountaintop removal mining industry in the state."

There’s no good reason West Virginia should remain the nation’s energy sacrifice zone. The rest of the world is galloping towards that new energy economy, embracing cleaner alternative energy in a big way.

"It’s obvious that the only security in the Bush-Enron energy plan is the security of fossil fuel industry executives’ bank accounts," said Janet Fout, OVEC staffer and a coordinator of the People’s Election Reform Coalition. "In the 2000 election campaign, coal mining interests gave more money to Bush than to any other politician. And, as we now are finding out, Enron basically bought themselves a champion in the highest political office in the country. This energy plan isn’t written for the security of the common people. Indeed, the greed and lack of vision in the Bush-Enron energy plan is stunning -- after all, we all have to breathe air and drink water. With all the cleaner energy alternatives available, you have to wonder about the long-term sanity of this plan," Fout said.

As the Senate moves to examine the Bush-Enron plan, we’ll see if sanity prevails.