There are legitimate concerns about pollution from the burning of coal, and no one need apologize for insisting on reasonable pollution controls on coal mining or any industry.
But the recent experience of a coal mine owner in Walker County, Ala., northwest of Birmingham, showed that environmental activism can have painful consequences when it is not balanced against practical economic considerations.
The owner, Ronnie Bryant, attended a public hearing at which coal-mining operations were blasted by one speaker after another.
Bryant had obtained a permit for his mine, and it would have been subject to environmental scrutiny. But he became so disgusted by the ceaseless attacks on mining that he finally threw in the towel.
Here is what he said when he stepped up to the microphone at the hearing: