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It Isn't Radical to Want to Preserve Mountains
Coal companies are the extremists in this scenario
In a column headlined "Congress must rein in an arrogant EPA," president Bill Raney of the West Virginia Coal Association invoked "jobs and "families" five times.
Not once did he mention the real reason for the massive destruction of our mountains - coal company profit.
Raney does not represent miners and their families. He represents coal companies that pay him to be their spokesperson.
If coal companies can make more money by replacing people with machines, that is what they will do.
They are in the business of making money, not protecting jobs or families, as Raney would lead us to believe.
Since my dad was an underground miner, coal companies have replaced 100,000 coal mining jobs with machines.
Raney tries to divert our attention away from mountaintop removal by accusing President Obama of being anti-coal and anti-business.
For sure, the Environmental Protection Agen-cy under President Obama is doing a better job of enforcing mountaintop removal mining laws than did Bush the younger.
This was not difficult.
How can a president who bailed out Wall Street and General Motors qualify as anti-business? Employees, executives and political action committees of large corporations gave several million dollars to Obama's campaign for president and for his inauguration.
Patriot Coal's Hobet 45 strip mine in Lincoln County is a good example of what EPA is really doing.
It allowed that permit to go ahead with "only" three miles of headwater streams filled in instead of six. To the EPA, it is OK for three miles of ecologically vital streams to be smothered in coal mining waste.
Patriot Coal will be able to mine 91 percent of the coal in its original permit. This doesn't sound like anti-coal or anti-business.
It sounds very close to the Bush II administration.
Because we exhale carbon dioxide, Raney wrote, "How harmful could that be?"
That question was aimed at an ignorant audience, which is bad aim, since most editorial readers are not ignorant people.
Every respected scientist knows that too much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere can cause serious climate change. None claim it isn't happening or that carbon dioxide is harmless.
Raney continues to try to hang the label of "radical" on those who want our mountains to be unmolested.
But what could be more radical than blowing mountaintops away in the Mountain State?
Raney represents the radical, out-of-state, environmental extremists called coal companies.
His article ridicules environmental justice as if he can't imagine that there are some silly people who want justice more than money.
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12 Comments so far
Show AllLet's add the words "environmental terrorists" to this description of the coal companies. How else can an entity that plunders and permanently damages the earth, poisons the water and land, exploits the labor, pockets massive predatory profits, and violates the most basic health and safety regulations with absolute impunity, be described?
what's wrong with "radical" ideas?
radical or not, people should have what they want.
Some MTR facts:
1. The MTR mining method is employed becasue it employs fewer people-per ton produded and saves on labor costs.
2. Only about 2-3% of US national coal production is produced using MTR methods.
3. Only the most rare and catastrophic geologic pricesses approach the destruction of MTR mining. The Mt. St. Helens eruption buried less forest land than just 3 or 4 of the scores of large MTR mines in West Virginia.
4. The valley fills are geologic-scale features all by themselves, sometimes more than 1000 feet deep, but only something like an asteroid impact would produce such things naturally. Consequently, the random rock rubble comprising the fills leaches toxic pollutants (that would normally be released extremely slowly in intact rock) esentially forever on human time scales. This pollution degrades the water quality all the way down the Kanawa, Coal, or big Sandy rivers, then the Ohio, then the Mississippi. Independent scientists sdudying the impacts of MTR were amazed that anything like it was ever allowed under the Clean Water Act (CWA).
5. The coal operators are accusing the EPA of "politics" for its permit reversal of the Spruce Mine. This is breathtaking hypocracy. That MTR was ever permitted to happen at all under the CWA was an act of bald-faced crony politics over public interest - of everyone - including, or especially, west Virginians.
"It Isn't Radical to Want to Preserve Mountains"
Thats got to be one of the most plaintive headlines I've ever read.
I agree, ubrew12.
It implicitly buys into the addictive, anti-intellectual political pop culture manufactured by the power elite and mainlined by the majority of miseducated, complacent Amerikan yahoo masses.
It reminds me of the time in my teens when I praised Rossini's "La Gazza Ladra" overture to my Italian-Amerikan Maternal Unit. She was mildly offended, and thought I wasn't saying the name right-- "'Gazza' is a bad word," she scolded.
This is because "gazza", Italian slang for "penis", literally means "magpie" or "crow". The English translation of the overture is "The Thieving Magpie". My MU didn't know that; she only knew the word from its taboo slang usage.
Similarly, words like "radical" and the even scarier "subversive" have been deprecated, demonized, and rendered pejorative in the above-cited political pop culture. Typically, writers like this feel compelled to accept the taboo at face value in order to explain that a "good" thing is, in terms of this irrational understanding of the term, is "not radical".
That is, they simply take it for granted that their readership reflexively thinks, "Oooh, 'radical'-- that's a BAD WORD!"
I presume they think they'll get more traction by this rearguard, defensive tactic than by swimming against the current to rehabilitate the term "radical" in the first place, which is certainly the more high-minded alternative.
radical - of or pertaining to the root.
one tends to get a bit plaintive when one's home place is getting wrecked by mega corporations via big machines and massive explosives.
and for one's efforts to protect one's homeland, one gets labeled an extremist, a terrorist, a communist, etc...
"His article ridicules environmental justice as if he can't imagine that there are some silly people who want justice more than money."
Yup.
In Ken Wards "Coal Tatoo" blog (Charleston Gazette), announcing the EPA Decision, most of the responses were very supportive. But one response - coming from some rich-coal guy no doubt, condemned the decision and - wrote that he was buying an internet Spanish course now and they'll just move their strip mining opertions to Colombia, where there much more freedom and there are no meddlesome regulations.
Well, freedom for some. He didn't mention that anyone who advicates environmental regulation in Colombia is dragged out of their home and shot.
He was then waxed eloquent at how deeply moved he was when he read "Atlas Shrugged", and wrote that if "John Gault were alive today", he would be (like in the novel) be "on strike." (Bosses strike = freedom and good; workers strike = socialism and bad). No one reminded him that "John Gault" is just a fictitious character in a nutty woman's novel.
So no, this guy probably can't even concieve of someone who would want justice more than money.
And, judging from the paucity of comments to MTR issues, not very many CD readers care about environmental justice in West Virginia either. I chalk it up to yankee and west-coast bias and chauvinism toward the Appalacian region.
excellent comment, buddy.
especially that last sentence.
regional bias and chauvinism abound amongst the internet based left/progressive communities.
I almost never encountered people saying things like fuck the south, let 'em secede, they are all dumbass hillbillies, etc... in face to face organizing and networking efforts when i went to meetings outside the region. in fact, most greenies i interacted with were quick to offer solidarity and make the case for alliances based on shared issues or targets (like a company doing damage in Maine and Tennessee).
However, after the 2000 election, email and comments on boards like this tended to contain much disdain for the entire region and its people whenever a popular writer mentioned something dumb happening in the south. a current example is the article over on ThinkProgress about some Tea Party morons here in TN trying to change high school curricula. Most comments are typical trashtalk, but a few go on about how dumb all people in TN are, etc...
really appreciate your consistent support tho.
hope you have a great weekend.
for those interested in helping to stop mountaintop removal please get involved at the following:
www.mountainjustice.org
www.ilovemountains.org
www.climategroundzero.org
www.crmw.org
The president of Massey Energy should be made to drink Coal slurry. Especially after the recent mine disaster that hasn't slowed his profit pursuit down a bit.
Ahhh, good to the last drop, eh?
Comment deleted by poster
You're not going to win a "war of words" with the coal companies, Mr. Martin, no matter how righteous your cause--at least not quickly enough for it to matter.
The best course of action would be to instead support a technology that would not only make electricity production using coal obsolete, but one that could utilize a source of renewable energy that is abundant in Appalachia, which could be sited on already degraded land, and which would also not be an eyesore or present a danger to humans or wildlife.
The source of energy to which I'm referring is Convective Available Potential Energy, CAPE, and the technology to harvest it, is the Atmospheric Vortex Engine, AVE.
See http://vortexengine.ca