The future runs on coal??

   I recently visited the town in Pennsylvania that bares my last name.  I have passed St. Clair on Route 81 many times on my way back home in Pennsylvania and have often wondered what the town was like.

   The town was named after an ancestor of mine, Arthur St. Clair, who lived in the area in the 1700's.

  Driving through the town was depressing.  The town seemed to have seen better days.  The median family income is $28,000.  One fourth of the population is over 65. There were few people on the streets.   I knew from reading about the town that it was a coal mining town at one time.  From the signs that I saw like the ones below it seems that the population is still tied to the coal industry.

   It seems that they blame the President for the fact that their industrial jobs are disappearing. The fact that coal is part of our past and not our future seems to be something they have not accepted. I am glad we live in a community that doesn't have this reality. Tying your economic future to a dying industry can lead to a bitter community looking for outside forces to blame.

P.S.
I received this from the Howard County Climate Change Initiative:

"Thur Oct. 24, 7 p.m.- Climate Reality Presentation at the Howard County Conservancy, 10520 Old Frederick Road/PO Box 175, Woodstock, Maryland 21163 . The members of the Climate Reality Leadership Corps have been trained by Al Gore to deliver Climate Reality presentations in a wide range of community forums. Presenters are Sara Via and Linda Reed. Sara Via is Professor of Biology and Entomology at the Univ. of Md in College Park. Sara became interested in climate change 15 years ago while studying human impacts on ecosystems for a lecture to her class. Since then, she has become increasingly fascinated by the intricacy of ecological interactions between living things and their environments, and by the ways in which these fragile webs are affected by human activities. Sara is known as an energetic and enthusiastic speaker, and her goal as a Climate Leader is to increase public understanding of climate change and motivate widespread public action to curb its rapid progression. Linda Reed is a professional corporate trainer and organizational development consultant with over 25 years of experience. She is also a certified Al Gore trained Climate Leader with deep commitment to the environment. She has sparked many audiences to action and looks forward to bringing her expertise to the Climate Reality momentum. Bio here and RSVP here."

P.S. 1

Richard Dawkins said that one of the reasons we have not heard from civilizations on other planets maybe that when they develop the technology to communication with other worlds they also develop the means to end their civilizations.  The time period for both these to occur is maybe only a century or two.  Hear it at 4:50 in this link. Scary thought!