West Virginia Not The Only Place To Reckon With Industrial Decline

For the last two weeks, West Virginia Public Broadcasting has been looking at Coal and The Way Forward in West Virginia with a special series of reports. Today, we cap off that series with the final installment.

Over the past 50 years in West Virginia, jobs in coal mining have declined by 66 percent — and experts don’t predict a comeback. But we’re not alone — other industrial places around the world face similar dilemmas.

Roxy Todd spoke with some of the people who live in those places, to find out where we may be headed. She started in Germany fifty years ago — when coal executives and political leaders were forced to make tough decisions when it came to the future of coal, and their home.

West Virginia Morning is a production of West Virginia Public Broadcasting which is solely responsible for its content. You can keep up with the latest West Virginia news throughout the day on our website, wvpublic.org.

Support for our news bureaus comes from West Virginia University, Concord University, and Shepherd University.