Game changer?

The big news in WV these days is a "game changing" deal with China Energy that could mean $83 billion in investment around shale gas and related developments. I found two different but interesting takes on this news from different parts of the state.

This Gazette piece warns that the deal could doom WV to another century as a mineral colony and could have negative environmental impacts. Closer to the likely point of impact, I found this piece from the Wheeling Intelligencer, which is generally pretty conservative, to be interesting. While not criticizing the deal as such, it warns about the dangers of continuing to rely on one major industry, even a relatively new one.

It even calls for making the Future Fund, which is only on the books at this point, a reality. The idea behind a Future Fund is to set aside a portion of severance taxes to create a permanent source of wealth for WV.

I especially like the idea of investing more in education, or "preparing our children for careers in which they, not anything pulled from the earth, were viewed as the valuable resource."

In any case, I hope WV doesn't make the same mistake in the century to come that it did in the last one.