The best kept dirty little secret in America
Coal is cheap energy, it is also the most polluting of all fossil fuels. If we are going to stand any chance whatsoever of averting catastrophic climate change then we need to stop digging the stuff out of the ground and start investing in alternatives immediately.
At the southern end of the Appalachian Mountains in the USA they use the most destructive method of mining this dirtiest of fuels; first they clear fell the virgin forest on a mountain containing coal, then they blow the top off it using high explosives, then they dump the waste in nearby valleys and extract the coal – often many hundreds of meters of mountain are removed for a few meters of coal. They also wash the coal and leave the resulting slurry in enormous ponds among the mountains.
So here we have a grossly destructive and polluting method of extracting a filthy fuel which, because of catastrophic climate change, we cannot afford to burn. But screw the climate, screw future generations, screw the communities who live locally, screw the scenic beauty of the area, screw everything in favour of money.
Click on the picture and get involved via Facebook.
As my friend Scot put it recently “Blowing the tops off of mountain ranges to harvest dirty coal harms the people and places of Appalachia, destroys the economic potential of the Appalachian Mountains for clean energy opportunities and furthers the burning of climate killing coal… Mountaintop removal, the world’s worst strip mining, is unacceptable. Period.”
More on this soon, but for now look up Coal River Valley (West Virginia) and get involved at MountainAction.org and ClimateGroundZero.org and MountainJustice.org.
Great article in the National Geographic from 2006.
Massey Energy have been getting more desperate and aggressive recently in response to protests, sending teams of thugs to hunt down activists in the forest while accusing the peaceful protesters of being violent, getting injunctions against the protesters, and otherwise rising to the protesters’ escalation of actions against the company.
However the one thing Massey don’t do, can’t do, is argue that what they are doing is right or just. Because it simply isn’t.
