Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

As energy executives go, few manage to stir controversy and elicit vitriol from environmentalists with as much relish as Don L. Blankenship, the mustachioed chief executive of Massey Energy, one of the largest coal companies in Appalachia.

Massey was the company involved in a deadly explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine earlier this year, and as we wrote in Sunday’s Times, it is also drawing fire for its plans to surface-mine a West Virginia mountaintop that activists in the area, realistically or not, would rather see turned into a wind farm.

In a lengthy interview, Mr. Blankenship was characteristically unreserved in explaining why he sees this idea — along with global warming and opposition to destructive mountaintop-removal mining techniques — as absurd.

“Some people believe in CO2 so strongly it trumps every other thought that they’ve got, so we wouldn’t expect them to favor coal mining,” Mr. Blankenship said. “Some people believe that the country should be socialized so they are opposed to free enterprise. I mean, you have to have your own

beliefs, your own core beliefs, your own strengths and do what you think is right. You can’t do what others believe is right, you have to do what you

believe is right.”

Several outtakes from that interview, conducted last month at a Massey subsidiary in Belfry, Ky., follow.

Click to watch excerpts from the interview.



Photo Credits: Stephen Crowley/The New York Times, J. Emilio Flores for The New York Times, Matthew Staver for The New York Times, Getty Images