Politicians and mining groups love to boast that West Virginia has enough coal to power America for another 200 years. But snowballing research tells a totally different story.

The central Appalachian coal field — chiefly southern West Virginia and eastern Kentucky — is exhausting its easy-to-mine coal, and production is dropping swiftly, the U.S. Department of energy reports.

The rapid decrease is occurring chiefly because quick-and-easy seams are running out. Mining thin-and-difficult seams costs more, so the region can’t compete with cheap coal from the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana or cheap gas from Marcellus Shale drilling.

Extracting coal from thin-and-difficult seams causes more environmental devastation, running afoul of nature-protecting laws. Various West Virginia leaders accuse federal pollution regulators of damaging the coal industry. They sued the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and want to gut the EPA in Congress. But actually, nature damage isn’t the main problem. The coal industry simply faces an end to inexpensive options.

For decades, economists have warned that West Virginia must seek a wider variety of industries and businesses, because the days of coal are numbered. These new research findings indicate that state leaders should redouble their effort to diversify — quickly.

— Charleston (W.Va.) Gazette, Oct. 2