In this month marked by political conventions, West Virginia has one of its own. Unfortunately, relatively little attention will be paid to the Mountain Party's gathering, even though its platform provides a spot-on prescription for the pollution-plagued state's salvation.
West Virginia is in a special rut. In a recent Gallup Poll, it came in last among the 50 states in regard to citizens' perception of their wellbeing. That is no small wonder from an environmental perspective.
Mountaintop coal mining, a pervasive feature in the state, is a particular scourge. Where it occurs, the rates of lung cancer are staggering due to the discharge of toxic dust into neighboring communities. It's no surprise that West Virginia has the highest per capita mortality from exposure to fine particles. The disfiguring removal of tops of mountains to extract seams of coal also results in the dumping of contaminated spoil into the streams in the valleys below. That is not good news for the West Virginia villages that rely on these streams for their drinking water.
According to data compiled by federal and state environmental agencies, 40 percent of West Virginia's streams are too contaminated for normal use, and less than 25 percent are fully biologically functional.
The West Virginia Mountain Party wants to halt mountain top mining, a course opposed by both the state's Democratic and GOP establishment who have long been subservient to a well-entrenched coal industry.
Nor is the Mountain Party alone. At least one recent state poll (sponsored by environmental groups) found 57 percent of the respondents in favor of a ban. A majority were prepared to engage in the transition from fossil fuels to clean, renewable energy such as wind and solar. It is a transition endorsed in the Mountain Party's platform, brave talk in a state historically at the fossil fuel industry's beck and call.
In its 16 years of existence, the Mountain Party has failed to get any of its candidates, including several gubernatorial aspirants, elected to statewide office. Undaunted, the Party has a gubernatorial nominee as well as four candidates running for the State Legislature this November. They are, at best, improbable long shots. Indeed, the Party has captured little more than two percent of the electorate throughout the years, and the statewide media continue to take scant notice.
So what, if anything, does the Party have going for it as it holds its July 16th convention in the hamlet of Bridgeport?
Some of Senator Bernie Sanders' followers from his successful West Virginia primary campaign have been attracted to the Mountain Party as a vehicle for their progressive crusade. The state requirement that voters must adhere to a straight ticket on their ballot has been eliminated, giving third parties more of an opportunity to siphon away support.
Finally, as pollution increases, more West Virginians may be receptive to a progressive anti-establishment stance, given the two major parties' dogged fealty to a "dirty" industry.