Historian reminds us that energy workers and environmentalists haven't always been at odds

Social historian Chad Montrie was at the University of Kentucky Friday to discuss the context of his newest book A People's History of Environmentalism in the United States. Montrie is probably best known for his book To Save the Land and People: A History of Opposition to Surface Coal Mining in Appalachia, which made him popular in that movement.

Montrie, a history professor at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, said an accurate portrayal of the history of workers' in the environmental movement would help us better understand its current status. He said the story of environmentalist workers has been ignored, and that shortcoming has shaped the way we understand the history of environmentalism. Most people believe the movement started when Rachel Carson's Silent Spring was published, but Montrie writes in his book that the movement actually started during the Industrial Revolution, when factory smoke obscured city skies and workers became worried about how this affected their health.

During the New Deal, the Civilian Conservation Corps was created to replant forests that had been clear-cut, a measure that would stave off destructive erosion. This "enriched environmentalism" and "put working people and their families back in the story," Montrie said. However, during the Reagan era, the role that workers had played in environmentalism for two centuries was largely missed as people became "ashamed of liberalism."

He spoke about Appalachians who fought to end strip mining long before Earth Day was established in 1970. He said the practice could have been abolished in the 1970s had the leadership of the United Mine Workers of America not become corrupt. The organization had been opposed to strip mining because it reduced jobs, but the union's leadership became dominated by those with strong industry connections. Then it used the idea that concern for the environment would put miners out of work as a reason to stop regulations, an idea that Montrie called "absolutely absurd."

He said the lesson to remember is that workers and environmentalists are not always on opposite sides, as he says coal companies would currently like the public to believe. Sometimes, they agree. He said a more accurate account of workers' role in the movement will help with reconciliation and improve our understanding of the environmental movement. "It's easy for us to look back and see what we did wrong," he said, "but it's harder for us to see what we're doing in the present."