The Webb Abides: Heroic Anti-Mountaintop Removal Activist Wins Prestigious Purpose Prize

Nice work, Mr. Webb. Keep the faith!
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost

Mountaintop Removal: Strip Mining?

photo: ilovemountains.org

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See all those nasty gray splotches, like blight? That's mountaintop removal. Those hills and valleys and streams are gone forever. Toxic forever.

Why call it mining?

When folks hear the word mining, they think of mine shafts. They think underground. They think pickaxes and hardhats and miner's lamps, and guys with smudged faces who trudge out of mine shaft elevators at the end of a backbreaking, lung-soiling shift.

They don't, I suspect, think of huge twenty story tall machines with names like "The Captain" scraping away entire mountain ranges, filling sparkling clear streams and creeks with sticky goo. They don't think of suffocated trout washed up on stream banks; poisoned, bloated raccoons; and starving deer searching in vain for vegetation to graze. And they don't think of multi-generational families that go back three hundred years on a stretch of land -- a wooded mountainside, or a verdant holler pasture -- driven out, destitute, landless and depressed. Hope for the future is destroyed -- for families, wildlife, and national posterity. But that's what strip mining is today. And that's what people who run the strip mining business choose to do every day: get up in the morning, and destroy the world.

So, let's not call it strip mining. Let's be straight about it. Let's call it...

landscRAPING

Watch The Jeff Bigger's video if you don't believe me:






SUPPORT APPALACHIA'S STRUGGLE TO SAVE THEIR LAND, THEIR WATER, AND THEIR LIVES...
VISIT: ilovemountains.org

Senator Byrd Opposes Mountaintop Removal

Senator Byrd of West Virginia, a long time supporter of the coal industry, released a statement on December 3 opposing mountaintop removal strip mining for coal.

The statement appears in the Appalachian Voices Front Porch Blog.

My comment on that statement is:

I truly admire and respect Senator Byrd. I've always been awed by his foreign policy speeches.

But he's mistaken about one thing. He states:
"Let’s speak a little more truth here. No deliberate effort to do away with the coal industry could ever succeed in Washington because there is no available alternative energy supply that could immediately supplant the use of coal for base load power generation in America. That is a stubborn fact that vexes some in the environmental community, but it is reality."

We really could provide base load power without coal or nuclear using existing, least cost technology.

Here's a short bit from my blog that makes this point: http://cyclopsvuethinks.blogspot.com/2009/02/renewables-intermittency-reliability.html

And here's a whole list of articles from a reputable source, the Rocky Mountain Institute, that make the case for efficiency savings and distributed power (instead of large central plants): http://www.rmi.org/rmi/pid257

The technology exists now, and is cost-effectively implemented in this and other countries. We just need to learn about it and get to work.

Still, I'm encouraged by Senator Byrd's statement.

Cheers!

We need to stop propagating misinformation in the energy debate.

Brought to you by Massey Energy...

What a waste that someone like Mr. Micklem, who has devoted his life to advancing our knowledge of the verdant natural world humanity inherited, has to risk ending his life combating ignorance of that world, and ambivalence toward it, and reckless destruction of it.

Ignorance, ambivalence, and destruction that are actively encouraged by corporate and government leaders who know better. And it happens for no other reasons but fear and greed.

A shout into the void...

Stop killing our damn mountains!(an image shamelessly borrowed from: Rob Perks)

And blasting continues un-abated on Coal River Mountain. Where's the outrage? Where's the rancor? If nasty Massey Energy were dredging beach sand in the Hamptons, you can be sure the protest would be audible on the national media circuit from day one until the bitter end. And in the Hamptons parallel universe beach sand strip mine, the bitter end would would mean Massey slinking home with its tail between its legs. Why is that? Do landscapes count more when rich people use them for a playground? In our land of justice and equality, is that really it?

Let's go, folks. Save those gorgeous, pristine, ancestral hardwood forests and the hardworking people who's families have called those mountains home for centuries. Make a call, send an e-mail. Make noise!



visit: ilovemountains.org or Coal River Mountain Watch

Massey Coal is blowing Coal River Mountain away...

...for a few bucks and a pile of rotten coal (more info?).These are excerpts from a letter I sent to the EPA, which I modeled after a Rainforest Action Network letter:

Put a stop to mountaintop removal coal mining on Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, which is the area's last mountain untouched by mountaintop removal. The blasting not only threatens communities in the vicinity, it will also destroy the potential for a wind project that had rallied local residents as a prime opportunity to create permanent jobs, strengthen the local economy and provide renewable energy to the region.

Coal River Mountain has enough wind potential to accommodate a 328-megawatt wind farm. Show Appalachia you care. Press for, approve and encourage the windfarm.

Worse, the blasting is near the Brushy Fork slurry impoundment, which holds 8.2 billion gallons of toxic coal slurry. Should the blasting cause the impoundment to fail, nearby residents would have just minutes to evacuate before they were overtaken by a 50-foot wall of coal slurry that could cost more than 1,000 lives.

Blasting near this unlined impoundment increases the risk of failure, and we know it. If the impoundment fails, we are all complicit in the destruction to Brushy Fork and its ground water. Let's act. Now.

Thanks!

Visit the Rainforest Action Network, and take action to preserve beautiful, verdant Appalachia. Now!

King Koal Feels the Pinch...a little

Good news...
(quoted from ilovemountains.org)

Today, September 11th, 2009, the EPA announced recommendations on 79 mountaintop removal valley fill permits that have been under review.

The EPA recommended that none of these permits be passed through for approval as they are written. The decision is not final, but is part of a coordination procedure outlined between the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Department of Interior. To understand the timeline and next steps, read our Background Info.

...and, a stunning, but depressing video from Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, which features local perspectives on the destruction caused by mountain top removal. Watch it:


Mountaintop Removal Slideshow from Kentuckians For The Commonwealth on Vimeo.

now, contact your congressional representative and urge them to support/co-sponsor:

• Clean Water Protection Act (H.R. 1310) in the House
• Appalachia Restoration Act (S. 696) in the Senate

See which politicians line up for coal money at:
Follow the Coal Money
You can find your representatives' contact info here:
Contact Your Representative

Mountaintop removal continues...

So it ends.

The tree sitters, Nick Stocks and Laura Steepleton, (with Climate Ground Zero) at Pettry Bottom, West Virginia were chased away by mine security staff who saw fit to torment the protesters with lights, noise, and finally buzzing chainsaws. So the tree sitters descended. But not before six days passed and the two protesters delivered a little more attention to the plight of these verdant hills and hardwood forests which the Massey Mining Corp. is destroying for a few bucks profit. And don't think that Massey employs loads of local residents in their calamitous endeavor. They don't. In fact, with groundwater cleanups, road construction, etc. it would be cheaper for the states where mountaintop removal is conducted to pay the miners to stay home. But that's not where the real money is. The real money goes into executive's pockets. And then around election time, a bit of those ill-gotten gains are used to buy the compliance and silence of key politicians.

Meanwhile, local residents get screwed: their groundwater is poisoned, their air is fouled with dust, the silence is punctuated with earthshaking dynamite blasts, their villages and homes are threatened by rickety sludge impoundments, and their long cherished hunting, fishing, berry & mushroom picking, and hiking grounds are lost forever. Instead of rippling hills and valleys with sun-dappled glades and sparkling streams, they are left with flat, gray, infertile plains of wasteland. And so are the rest of us. Forever.

Mountaintop Removal, To Our Shame, Continues

Right now, there are two people, Nick Stocks and Laura Steepleton, from climategroundzero.net sitting on postage stamp platforms in two different trees. They've been up there for days and they've got buckets for privies to prove it. Sun, fog, rain, wind -- they've stayed because they're disgusted with the inertia of a political system that allows the travesty of mountaintop removal to continue. Coal companies will destroy gorgeous Appalachia -- hard-working Appalachia -- for no good reason whatsoever. That is, they'll destroy it for money. And they'll do it surrounded by the people who's lives they've ruined, who've gotten very little of that money at all. Surely not enough to send out a fleet of lawyers and lobbyists to stop the destruction of their ancestral lands.

And the coal they get from 500,000 acres of flattened, poisoned hills and valleys; 2,000 miles of ruined streams? It provides 7% of the nation's electricity. You could cut your consumption 7% overnight: turn off a few unnecessary lights, or shut off the TV when you're not in the room, or unplug a few vampire power packs sticking out of the wall (or plug them in to a power strip with an old-fashioned on/off switch).

Here's a damn good explication of the facts from a fine writer who lives in Kentucky, Silas House: Devastating View from the Mountaintop Read it, then go here to tell your elected representatives to get off their asses and do something. Now.

Mountaintop Removal: Tell Congress to End It

Mountaintop removal coal mining is a callous attack on our common heritage that will be mourned and condemned by future generations.

Do you want to responsible for that? I don't.

Join Ashley Judd and the Sierra Club in their battle to preserve the mountain vistas and verdant hollows of the Appalachians at: http://action.sierraclub.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Coal_Mining_Tracker&autologin=true

This attack on our land provides us only 5% of the coal we burn, but poisons downstream residents and drives them from their homes, schools and workplaces. It wipes out animal populations for miles around where residents hunted and fished for generations. Once brilliant, rushing streams now ooze dark and toxic.

Let's put a stop to this profitable but mean-spirited insult to our heritage and progeny. It benefits no one but stockholders.

Contact your representatives, tell them to support The Clean Water Protection Act (H.R. 1310) and The Appalachian Restoration Act (S. 696). Tell them to end this, now.

Here's news on the latest EPA action: Obama Mountaintop Coal Mining Plan Disappoints Appalachian Advocates