Take a look at the signs in front yards in south­ern West Vir­ginia and you will see: ​“Stop the War on Coal. Fire Obama.”

Values of autonomy and independence that run deep here have become aligned with out-of-state coal companies against environmentalists and liberals.

A near­by bill­board reads: ​“Gang of Four, End of Coal. Jack­son, Manchin, Roberts, Oba­ma.” It’s a cam­paign ad for Repub­li­can Sen­ate can­di­date John Raese. He’s refer­ring to Lisa Jack­son, EPA Admin­is­tra­tor; Sen. Joe Manchin (D‑W.Va.); and Cecil Roberts, pres­i­dent of the Unit­ed Mine Work­ers of Amer­i­ca (UMWA).

As recent­ly as the 1980s, plen­ty of coal­field res­i­dents thought Big Coal was the prob­lem. But these days, in the coal­fields of Cen­tral Appalachia — south­ern West Vir­ginia, south­west­ern Vir­ginia, east­ern Ken­tucky and east­ern Ten­nessee— coal min­ing is over­whelm­ing­ly pop­u­lar, despite well-doc­u­ment­ed risks to work­ers’ health and com­mu­ni­ty safety.

Polit­i­cal groups like Cit­i­zens for Coal can turn out an enthu­si­as­tic crowd to counter envi­ron­men­tal protests against moun­tain­top removal min­ing (MTR). One Boone Coun­ty, W.Va., min­er put it this way: ​“These tree­hug­gers are about to fuck up big time. I’ve got a gun in this car, OK. There’s gonna be bloodshed.”

I spent the sum­mer in a coal min­ing com­mu­ni­ty of south­ern West Vir­ginia, research­ing how this pre­vi­ous Demo­c­ra­t­ic and labor strong­hold turned to the Right. As a young man sport­ing Mary­land license plates, I was sus­pect — a like­ly tree­hug­ger. One Ken­tucky min­er in his 40s told me as much when I inter­cept­ed him en route to his pre-dawn shift, adding, ​“Boy, I was gonna whup your ass.” He then sat down and talked with me. Many did not.

​“We are the econ­o­my here. With­out coal, this place wouldn’t have noth­ing,” says anoth­er Ken­tucky min­er, work­ing in Buf­fa­lo Creek, W.Va., who agreed to an inter­view but declined to give his name. ​“If they [the envi­ron­men­tal­ists] would find me an alter­na­tive, at what I make, I wouldn’t mind.”

At $108,000 a year, noth­ing in Appalachia com­pares to min­ers’ wages. The wage increase over the last half-cen­tu­ry is linked to increased mech­a­niza­tion — and a decreased work­force. And of course, it has changed the finan­cial and polit­i­cal nature of the workforce.

​“Look, I’ve got a house pay­ment, a truck pay­ment, a car pay­ment, a four­wheel­er pay­ment. … If they shut down coal I would lose every­thing,” says Pay­ton Evans, a min­er in his mid-20s who dri­ves sev­er­al hours from Pike Coun­ty, Ky., to work in West Virginia.

Thir­ty years ago there were bat­tles in the coal­fields — often phys­i­cal­ly vio­lent — for union­iza­tion of mines. Work­ers were at odds with com­pa­nies, fight­ing for bet­ter pay, high­er lev­els of safe­ty and bet­ter ben­e­fits. Those bat­tles, last fought by the UMWA in the 1980s and 1990s, were gen­er­al­ly lost. The union aban­doned mass strikes and lost contracts.

Com­pa­nies like Massey Ener­gy, bought out by Alpha Nat­ur­al Resources, raised wages and ben­e­fits while squelch­ing union­iza­tion — and, with mech­a­niza­tion, cut many jobs. Depop­u­la­tion fol­lowed. Today only one major region­al com­pa­ny, Patri­ot Coal, is union­ized, and it is in bankruptcy.

For those with jobs, life can be good. ​“We are scabs. We’re proud to be scabs,” says one sur­face min­er at the Camp Branch mine in Logan Coun­ty, W.Va., who also spoke anony­mous­ly. He prais­es Alpha Nat­ur­al Resources, the region’s biggest coal cor­po­ra­tion, for its treat­ment of its work­ers — how good its ben­e­fits are, how much man­age­ment cares about the employ­ees. (This despite the fact that the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment cit­ed Alpha for more than 200 safe­ty vio­la­tions at its mines in West Vir­ginia, Ken­tucky and Vir­ginia.) Most of all, my source stress­es how good all the min­ers are to each oth­er and the sur­round­ing community.

That loy­al­ty to the indus­try extends to fam­i­lies, friends and busi­ness­es sup­port­ed by coal min­ers. ​“Coal’s all we got,” says a gas sta­tion atten­dant in Buf­fa­lo Creek, work­ing at 4 a.m. to cater to min­ers on their way to work. ​“I mean, with­out it, this place wouldn’t be open; noth­ing would be around here.”

Who wouldn’t be afraid?

This win­ter saw the high­est employ­ment in the coal­fields since 1996, but there are struc­tur­al rea­sons to expect con­tin­ued decline of coal jobs here. The U. S. Ener­gy Infor­ma­tion Admin­is­tra­tion projects that Cen­tral Appalachi­an coal pro­duc­tion will decline by 58 per­cent by 2035, large­ly because it is less and less com­pet­i­tive with oth­er coal mar­kets. Steep com­pe­ti­tion from the bur­geon­ing nat­ur­al gas indus­try is also under­cut­ting coal.

One Boone Coun­ty min­er tells me, ​“Yeah I’m wor­ried about my job, but it’s not the econ­o­my.” He thinks the prob­lem is envi­ron­men­tal­ists and reg­u­la­tors. He has some cause: New CO2 emis­sions lim­its passed by the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency threat­en the long-term future of coal-fired pow­er plants, which make up 90 per­cent of the coal market.

He’s not alone. Many express ire toward those who protest coal’s costs. Junior Walk, a Boone Coun­ty native who once worked in a coal prepa­ra­tion plant and is now an envi­ron­men­tal activist, says intim­i­da­tion and safe­ty are seri­ous issues. ​“Just this morn­ing at 5 a.m. I woke up to three men bang­ing on my win­dows, and I had to go out­side with my shot­gun,” Walk tells me.

Social media is used as a mobi­liz­ing tool against ​“tree­hug­gers.” Aside from call­ing ral­lies and protests, posts like this August 6 one appear reg­u­lar­ly on Cit­i­zens for Coal’s Face­book page: ​“Just saw a post say­ing tree hug­ger in Gilbert eat­ing at Wallys restaurant.”

Lar­ry Gib­son, the late grand­fa­ther of the anti-MTR move­ment, had prop­er­ty destroyed, two dogs killed and his home shot at. ​“As a long­time oppo­nent of the coal indus­try, I’ve been the tar­get of threats, harass­ment and, recent­ly, a bur­glary,” Gib­son told me this sum­mer. ​“But I’m not intim­i­dat­ed. I will keep speak­ing out.”

One Logan Coun­ty min­er sums up a com­mon sen­ti­ment: ​“If we get a new pres­i­dent in Novem­ber, things will be all right.”

From Obama’s tar­get­ed mine inspec­tion pro­gram, which reduced this year’s min­er injury rate, to health­care ben­e­fit­ing black-lung vic­tims, to his fed­er­al invest­ments in clean coal tech­nol­o­gy (doc­u­ment­ed by the Pitts­burgh Post-Gazette), the pres­i­dent seems extreme­ly pro-coal. By con­trast, Rom­ney, as gov­er­nor of Mass­a­chu­setts, said ​“coal kills” and promised to enforce the stricter CO2 reg­u­la­tions, two actions that would be incen­di­ary in the coalfields.

Yet peo­ple in this part of the coun­try are sure they are get­ting a very bad deal out of their pres­i­dent (although they make it a point to men­tion that they are not racists). In West Virginia’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic pri­ma­ry this year, 41 per­cent vot­ed for a con­vict in protest against Oba­ma. ​“He promised to bank­rupt coal, and he did. He said it on nation­al news,” says a Wyoming Coun­ty, W.Va., min­er, refer­ring to Patri­ot Coal’s recent bank­rupt­cy. A truck­load of Ken­tucky min­ers explained to me how Oba­macare was going to force their employ­er, Alpha Nat­ur­al Resources, to drop their health coverage.

Junior Walk says that he heard mis­in­for­ma­tion like this at his coal job. When Oba­ma was elect­ed, he recalls, boss­es told employ­ees that they might have to lay them off because of the ​“green” Oba­ma admin­is­tra­tion. Walk believes that the com­pa­nies tell their fore­men to spread such sto­ries to their work­ers ​“to make them sup­port the indus­try, to do all this pro-coal shit.”

The coal com­pa­nies are not alone in stir­ring up anti-Oba­ma sen­ti­ment. The Chris­t­ian Right is deeply involved in coal­field pol­i­tics. This is also a gun cul­ture, and many believe the NRA’s charges that the pres­i­dent is attempt­ing to take guns away.

Those forces play upon val­ues of auton­o­my and inde­pen­dence that run deep here. For 150 years, these val­ues have helped Appalachi­ans sur­vive out­siders exploit­ing their moun­tain resources. Now those val­ues have become aligned with out-of-state coal com­pa­nies against envi­ron­men­tal­ists and liberals.

Some hold true to the region’s Demo­c­ra­t­ic roots. A retired min­er, sport­ing a ​“UMWA for Oba­ma” cap, rails, ​“These peo­ple are gonna be real sor­ry when they vote for Rom­ney and lose their Social Security.”

Through­out my sum­mer in Appalachia, what most sur­prised me was that, despite the tense cli­mate, so many peo­ple were still kind and open with me. Min­ers took time from their days to explain issues to some­one they cor­rect­ly clocked as a treehugger.

Two min­ers who spoke with me in front of a Burg­er King left me with this request: ​“Please. Don’t do us injus­tice.” I hope I have not done so.