Sunday, April 20, 2008

Coal Companies Give Mother Nature a Roofie, Has Its Way With Her

"They don't realize that that's where they get their electricity from," the driver said over the radio. "God gave us coal to mine, then, didn't He?"




Washington Post celebrates Earth Day by depressing the shit out of me:

"There's one big reason you mountaintop mine. That's where the good Lord put the coal," said Bill Raney, president of the West Virginia Coal Association. He said that about 70 percent of the coal from surface mines in this part of Appalachia originates at mountaintop mines.

. . .

"Any coal coming from central Appalachian strip mines is almost certainly coming from mountaintop-removal-type mines . . . that bury streams and that permanently destroy, you know, many, many miles of forest," said Joe Lovett, executive director of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, an environmental group in West Virginia.

The story of mountaintop mining here begins with the mountains themselves: They have been carved over 140 million years, making them older than the Himalayas but only a fraction of their size. Inside, there are shiny, uneven layers of bituminous coal, like icing in a layer cake somebody dropped.

1 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hello. This post is likeable, and your blog is very interesting, congratulations :-). I will add in my blogroll =). If possible gives a last there on my blog, it is about the Webcam, I hope you enjoy. The address is http://webcam-brasil.blogspot.com. A hug.

6:26 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home