The telecom titan Verizon just recently laid off around 15,000 employees, and it was just a blip on an otherwise slow news day. The DIY craft giant Michael’s regularly hires 15,000 seasonal workers for the holidays, and it doesn’t generally even brush up against a headline. We provide these numbers to help our listeners scale the 14,000 people working in West Virginia’s coal industry, and the massive influence the question of their employment has on the American political and environmental landscape. This week on Sea Change Radio, we speak with Babette Hogan and Julie Eisenberg, whose new film, Running For The Mountains, takes a close look at the West Virginia coal mining industry. We discuss the environmental waste caused by coal in the state, dive into West Virginia’s politics, and hear what they learned over their 15 year film-making process.