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TechnoratiDear Al Gore: Speak Against the Rape of Coal River Mountain
Dear Al Gore:
Two months ago at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, you declared that, "If you're a young person looking at the future of this planet and looking at what is being done right now, and not done, I believe we have reached the stage where it is time for civil disobedience to prevent the construction of new coal plants that do not have carbon capture and sequestration."
In truth, we can't wait for the construction of a new coal plant to keep the promise of a future for our nation's youth, or our own generation. The future of this planet is now in West Virginia. There is an even more urgent crime taking place before our eyes: As you have declared in public, that crime is mountaintop removal, (http://www.appvoices.org/index.php?/frontporch/blogposts/al_gore_on_mtr_ed_wiley_marsh_fork_elementary/ ).
Today, at the same time President-elect Barack Obama announced a forthcoming economic recovery package and clean energy job programs, one of the most blatantly outrageous acts of mountaintop removal was not only sanctioned by the state of West Virginia. It will not only destroy a mountain and a neighboring mountain community, but it will destroy one of the most acclaimed proposals for wind energy and permanent clean energy jobs in Appalachia.
Al Gore: The time has come for you to make a urgent trip to Coal River Mountain in West Virginia to witness and speak out against one of the most scandalous acts of regulatory neglect and crimes against nature and our fellow American citizens.
Here are the bona fides:
Dismissing an overwhelming majority of West Virginian support for clean energy and jobs initiatives, Governor Joe Manchin and state government officials turned their backs on West Virginians today and granted the Massey Energy coal company a Bee Tree surface mining permit revision for one part of their proposed mountaintop removal of Coal River Mountain. According to local residents and legal experts, the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection has circumvented the intent of the law by excluding the public from the permit process. Residents, in fact, discovered that the original application for the permit revision had significant issues with valley fills and in-stream sediment ponds. Nonetheless, the DEP rejected any public discussion.
Massey Energy now has the permission to begin the blasting of the first proposed area of the Coal River Mountain.
The Coal River Valley has been inhabited for over 10,000 years. Since 1783, many of its first residents settled on land grants for Revolutionary War veterans who bled and fought for the cause of freedom and independence, and built the West Virginia foundations of our country.
In the face of this massive mountaintop removal plan, drawing on the ingenuity of their coal mining community and national energy experts, local residents in the Coal River Mountain area have drawn up a Coal River Wind Project to create jobs, generate energy and preserve the mountains and mountaineer heritage (coalriverwind.org). Awarded Co-Op America's national award for "Building Economic Alternatives" in 2008, the Coal River Wind Project would place West Virginia in the forefront of the clean energy movement in the United States.
Extensive research has shown that Coal River Mountain has enough wind potential to provide permanent electricity for between 100,000 and 150,000 homes, while creating 50 well-paying, permanent jobs in an area long beholden to temporary coal mining jobs. According to Rory McIlmoil of the Coal River Mountain Watch, "The wind farm would also generate as over ten times more county revenue than the mountaintop removal operations would, and in a county with a poverty rate of 18.5%, this additional income would help to stimulate new economic development projects and the creation of new and lasting jobs for the county."
The blasting of Coal River Mountain will not only strip the range of its resources, its tributaries and forests, its history and its meaning; it will rob West Virginians of the possibility of creating long-lasting jobs and clean energy (http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/07/coal.river/index.html) .
Governor Joe Manchin has within his powers to issue a stay of execution of the Bee Tree Branch area, and all of Coal River Mountain by rescinding and rejecting the remaining permits; and to call for a thorough investigation of the necessary questions regarding the Bee Tree Branch and valley fills, sediment ponds, the maintenance of sediment ditches, and the impact on the Brushy Fork Impoundment; and to set up a commission to study the Coal River Wind Project and its implications for the state's energy plan.
Unlike his fellow Governor Brian Schweitzer in Montana, however, Governor Manchin still needs help from you, and other politicians and energy experts, in embracing the exciting reality of the coming green economy of clean energy.
Over a half century ago, your fellow Southern writer William Faulkner confronted Southerners who quietly allowed the South to "wreck and ruin itself in less than a hundred years." He begged his fellow Southerners to "speak now against the day, when our Southern people who will resist to the last these inevitable changes in social relations, will, when they have been forced to accept what they at one time might have accepted with dignity and goodwill, will say: 'Why didn't someone tell us this before? Tell us this in time?'"
Al Gore, it is time for you to make a public visit to Coal River Mountain, see first hand the historic nature of this great mountain, this community endeavor for preservation and clean energy, and speak now against the day of mountaintop removal in Appalachia.
14 Comments so far
Show AllObama is a major supporter of the coal industry, so "mountain top removal" will continue under an Obama Adminsitration.
Appalachia can't stand anymore of Presidebt Bush's and THE COAL INDUSTRIES prosperity, we are Third World America.
END MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL !
http://www.wisecountyissues.com
Wouldn't it be cool if Obama made Al Gore head of the EPA?
I didn't think anything was worse than strip mining until I saw mountain top removal.
The complaints about the unsiteliness of wind turbines is moot when compared to this permanent landscape destroying practice.
Back to the point. Whatever metaphor you use, an outrage is on the edge of happening if Governor Joe Manchin does not issue a "stay of execution" on this ravaging of yet another Appalachian mountain, just another peak blown off to get at the coal, and then dumped into headwater streams. The difference is that the local community around THIS mountain came up with a viable alternative: a 220 MW wind farm, to produce energy and jobs forever with no continuing greenhouse or other pollution--and Gamesa, the Spanish wind company, wants to build and maintain the farms. Coal River Wind Project's plan also includes some underground coal mining to wean the area off the coal jobs without the degree of permanent destruction that is mountaintop removal mining. If the MTR mining goes forward, the wind option will be lost, because the wind potential here, while some of the best in the East, exists only on the high ridges: once the level is brought hundreds of feet lower, the scarred remains of Coal River Mountain will no longer support a wind farm. Or a forest...and these are some of the most diverse, productive, and beautiful forests in the world.
So call Manchin, at 1-888-438-2731, toll-free, to ask him to stop this short-sighted slaughter. He stopped it once before after he got thousands of calls--but it was easy then, because Coal River Mountain Watch discovered that Massey Energy didn't have the permits they needed. Now they do. So Manchin would have to intervene to prevent the global publicity likely to result from allowing this particular project to go forward. If he doesn't, and hundreds of people from all over show up for a showdown, covered by national and international media--he might wish he had just made the problem go away.
Sioux Rose
If you recognize the spiritual persona of GAIA, then EARTH is the great MOTHER and to the extent her greatest natural resources are so violently ENTERED into and VIOLATED, it indeed IS rape. I am not sure which story upsets me more, that of the state of the world's women with respect to the daily threat of violence; or this encroachment upon the Divine Feminine made manifest as Tiera in all her amazing grace, once full of a dazzling display of organic treasures. These resources, traded for trinkets, with each day the precious works of time sacrificed for the transitory show the lack of wit, wisdom and conscience on the part of those positioned to make far more life-sustaining decisions.
Could Gore have an impact? Could Obama change his intentions? There's so much at stake... the earlier article on the pace of global warming and the escaping methane did say that a recession would slow such release. Perhaps the slow-down of the US economy will turn out to be our saving grace, the thing that extends to human life a longer interim of breath on this amazing sphere.
Sioux Rose: I made my comments as a rape survivor.
Good point, maybe you should write Webster's and let them know that due to your experience their usage of the word is clearly wrong.
Joe Hope:you could write them. Your idea. Thanks. For millions of us.
I agree with the analogy, but think about it. If mountain top removal is against your sensibilities (as it ought to be), and the practice the result of Coal companies supplying unsustainable energy to an addicted populace. We might then ask, who endoreses coal? Well, Obama does. He is a major proponent of coal. The coal industry gave him over 1/2 a million for presidential and senate runs. He has consistantly voted for coal sponsored Bills in the Senate, including a process of converting coal into liquid fuel that Green Peace asserts contribues five times the carbon to the atmospher as does burnt coal.
Conclusion: whoever voted for Obama, voted to continue raping our Earth Mother.
OED Rape: 1.the act of taking anything by force; violent seizure (of goods) robbery 2. The act of carrying away a person esp. a woman, by force
old goat: It was a great article and bad use of "rape" in title. I know rape. It's violence against people. (I'd like to see the ancient usage forgotten. It's used to "be colorful".) "The act of carrying away a person esp. a woman, by force." is silly. What's your point?
Old Goat's point, I would say, is that you need to buy a dictionary.
I deplore mountain top removal. Rape is about people, however.