What Life After Coal Looks Like in Romania

Kevin Faingnaert (photographs) and Keven Granville (text), “What Life After Coal Looks Like in Romania,”New York Times, April 18, 2019, B6-7.

     The mines, and the cities and the jobs, have faded.         Thriving communities were build around the mines during coal’s heyday.  Residents recall that the theater in Lupeni was packed during Romania’s Communist era. Many mine companies had their own libraries and clubs. 

COMMENT

     The lack of a library indicates how far the boom-and-bust fortunes of the Jiu Valley have fallen. In the age of climate change, using coal for fuel has become an existential threat. Coal made some communities prosperous for a while. The theater was supported by the former Communist government, but the article specifically says that the library was part of a company town. It is  inevitable that a single-industry extractive economy will eventually bust. With neither coal nor government to fund it, it seems there is no longer a library in the Jiu Valley at all. 

     The photos of the abandoned town are reminiscent of  the ravaged coal towns in Appalachia. In  Carbon Ideologies  William Vollman describes using small-town libraries in dying coal towns to  seek local history, do online research and find office space for writing while he was on the road.    Appalachian coal towns may not  be faring much better than the ones in Romania, but at least they still have libraries.