“Addictive Economies and Coal Dependency: Methods of Extraction and Socioeconomic Outcomes in West Virginia 1997-2009”

By: Gregory Pavela & Robert Todd Perdue

In this article, Gregory Pavela and Robert Todd Perdue examine the socioeconomic and environmental impacts of coal extraction on rural communities to determine if these communities suffer more harm or gain more benefits from the extraction patterns in place. Examinations of income, unemployment rates, and overall poverty rates in comparison with various extraction methods showed the authors that the rural communities involved are not actually the recipients of the socioeconomic benefits that are typically associated with a high-value resource. In the case of coal and West Virginia, Appalachian communities involved in the extraction process enjoyed short-term benefits of having “good jobs”, but still faced high levels of poverty. The issue lies in the nature of extraction. The economic benefits derived by the extracting community are solely in the extraction process, and not “economically ‘linked’ to the secondary industries that process and transform raw materials.” The extraction point is often the least valuable step in the value chain. This results in poor communities gaining the least value from their community resource, while others further along the value chain reap the true extent of economic benefits. These findings force the reader to question ethical and environmental narratives as they correlate with geography. Do these findings align with the stereotypical narrative of “taking” between rich and poor countries? The idea of the “resource curse” is validated in this article and asks the reader to question the ethical implications of natural resource management across geographic boundaries.