THE TROUBLE WITH COAL

Exaggeration? In some respects, yes; but also an understatement: You can't even get near the stuff, in fact, you can't even get near where it might be, for even exploration has been made all but impossible. The present mines, of course, are operating; but what of the future? The answer is given in a brilliant article by Eugene Guccione, "Why coal won't be America's energy salvation." Guccione is editor of Coal Mining and Processing, but the article appeared in the October issue of Reason ($1.25 from Box 40105. Santa Barbara. CA 93103).

The coal industry is not nationalized outright, says Guccione, but most of the land with coal in the West, where the relatively clean coal is, is controlled by the government, and the rest is so "checkerboarded" by public lands that the government controls the land anyway. And it isn't leasing any. It wasn't leasing before the Department of the Interior and other involved agencies were full of Nader's Invaders (see October Fortune), and it isn't going to lease now with the strip-mining act and other instruments of de-industrialization on the books. It took the US coal industry 57 years to increase production by 11.5(tZo; President Carter wants to double it (with the necessary railroads, hopper cars and other logistics) by 1985. Pardon our laugh: Perhaps it could be done, but his administration would first have to get out of the way. Guccione' s article, backed by facts and neat tables of figures, is indispensable reading for anyone wishing to know what is going on with coal.*

* Readers who write for this issue of Reason should not miss the short, but thought- provoking letter by J . E . Foy on p. 9. On the other hand, not everything in that issue should be considered as endorsed by this newsletter; in particular, we find the comparison of Churchill with Stalin on p.l 1 not only absurd, but offensive.