Of course all that the ED departments and Chamber of Commerce can think about are more-of-the-same big projects, usually highly polluting ones involving fossil fuels, like the Nucor project. Nucor is currently involved in battling locals in Honduras over a polluting mine. It has a history of crimes — a perfect company to lure to West Virginia, which lacking flat land close to major highways and an educated workforce, must compete by promising weak regulation.

As for the Morgantown project — yet another fossil fuel power plant, to service, what? Bitcoin “mining”? A stupid obscenity, the notion that you can “earn” money by wasting as much energy as possible. Madness, at a time of climate and ecological crisis.

What the area and its people need is assistance setting up a large network of small businesses. Small businesses hire more people, and are anchored by local people whose kids are in the local schools, who drink the local water, in other words, who care.

But naturally the economic development people can only think in terms of luring big faceless multinationals in from outside, and tracking up claims of hundreds of jobs in each plant — which usually turn out to be exaggerations. People running small businesses, or thinking about doing so, don’t lobby or bribe legislators, so they are of little interest to developers and public officials.

But a focus on facilitating the setup of a hundred small businesses mostly supplying local needs, and doing things in a sustainable fashion, would be a lot better for this state. Instead of putting in a cracker and plastics plant, like the one PA gave a $1.65 billion tax break to, to use up natural gas liquids, pollute the valley, produce more of something alarmed people are trying to get away from, and instigate who knows how many cancers — we could be producing alternatives to plastic, from wooden toys and silicone food storage bags to glass leftover containers, perhaps insulation panels made from mycelium (see Ecovative and Biohm). But this sort of thing is beyond the imagination of the people in charge.

Mary Wildfire, Roane County, WV