We need low-carbon sources of energy, whether or not you think climate change is a problem.

I study climate through energy, and I study how different energy choices impact water and land resources during production and use. Nowhere in the energy system is the link between energy use and water and land degradation clearer than with coal. And with the way we currently do things, community deterioration and human health and safety problems are strongly tied to this environmental degradation.

Here, I’m mostly going to talk about coal extraction and its impact on communities. In particular, coal mining is a dangerous job. You may have seen the reports on last week’s mine explosion at Massey Energy’s Upper Big Branch coal mine in Montcoal, W.Va. With 29 killed, it was the United States’ biggest mining accident since 1970.

This past summer, I worked on community watershed management and land ownership in West Virginia coal country, not too far from Upper Big Branch. There, I met people who had not realized until their teens that streams aren’t supposed to be orange; I also realized streams can be orange. When you mine coal, you expose surfaces to weathering processes that allow chemical reactions to take place, and so water can get, well, orange. And as we at UT understand, if the water matches your sweatshirt, you should probably steer clear of it.

But back to the mine disaster. A difficult pattern in environmentalist movements is that it often takes a highly visible tragedy before deeply troubling problems in an industry are corrected. In coal’s case, choruses about regional dependence on coal mining and the challenge of keeping energy cheap have often drowned out the growing number of voices calling their water contaminated, their land unsafe and their jobs and living situations dangerous. In Tennessee last year, 1.1 billion gallons of coal sludge broke out of a slurry dam and inundated many homes — and that got some attention.

Now, 29 people have died after an explosion almost a fifth of a mile underground, in a mine with 1,342 safety violation citations over the past five years, including two the day before the explosion. Will this be enough to hold people’s attention?

I’m not suggesting that 29 deaths are sufficient on their own to shut down an entire industry. While tragic, a freak accident of this magnitude would not provoke much notice. But this was not a freak accident.

Mining jobs pay well. Why? They’re dangerous. They’re also transient. While the United States may have enough coal to last a while before reserves become scarce, individual communities do not. Once the mine is depleted, the jobs go away — so building a town’s economy on mining jobs is a recipe for failure.

Enforcement of both safety and environmental regulations is pitiful. My summer supervisor sat in on a hearing in which one lawyer brought up a mine’s many violations. The coal lawyer successfully argued that violations are irrelevant, as the entire mining industry would shut down if they actually counted for anything. The federal government would also be opening a can of worms by increasing enforcement: Much of the East depends on West Virginian coal, and with regulated electricity rates, keeping things cheap is a major concern.

And so, we subsidize coal with streams, mountains, lives and communities. In many ways, we subsidize coal with West Virginia: Much of the most destructive mining occurs there. Its biggest city has a population smaller than U. Texas, and the whole state’s population is roughly that of the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metropolitan area. I’ve been through Montcoal, where the 29 miners died, and it is not a big place; 29 adults is a lot. West Virginia also has an independent streak to compete with Texas’. It is, after all, the only state that seceded from the Confederacy. This makes it hard for outsiders to participate, and the small population of insiders is wary of attacking the state’s major industry.

Coal is dirty. Atmospheric scientists will tell you that, joined by hydrologists, soil scientists and social scientists. Maybe we subsidize renewables with money, but we’re still subsidizing coal with people.