Tuesday, July 07, 2009

5 minutes in West Virginia

or can this planet be saved??? mountain top removal of the 2nd most diverse forest on our planet, largely responsible for some of the best news following the last ice age, will foreclose on a grim future for our descendants. along with the rainforest protection, what we do now will determine the future for those who come after......it matters and it's up to us ....ATTENTION CONGRESS !!!!!!!!

STOP MOUNTAIN TOP REMOVAL!!!!!!!





oh and attention President Obama and Michelle Obama too....


A President Breaks Hearts in Appalachia A mountaintop coal mining site at Kayford Mountain in West Virginia. (By Jeff Gentner -- Associated Press)



By Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Friday, July 3, 2009

Mountaintop removal coal mining is the worst environmental tragedy in American history. When will the Obama administration finally stop this Appalachian apocalypse?

A mountaintop coal mining site at Kayford Mountain in West
Virginia. (By Jeff Gentner -- Associated Press)


If ever an issue deserved President Obama's promise of change, this is it.
Mining syndicates are detonating 2,500 tons of explosives each day -- the
equivalent of a Hiroshima bomb weekly -- to blow up Appalachia's mountains and extract sub-surface coal seams. They have demolished 500 mountains -- encompassing about a million acres -- buried hundreds of valley streams under tons of rubble, poisoned and uprooted countless communities, and caused widespread contamination to the region's air and water. On this continent, only Appalachia's rich woodlands survived the Pleistocene ice ages that turned the rest of North America into a treeless tundra. King Coal is now accomplishing what the glaciers could not -- obliterating the hemisphere's oldest, most biologically dense and diverse forests. Highly mechanized processes allow giant machines to flatten in months mountains older than the Himalayas -- while employing fewer workers for far less time than other types of mining. The coal industry's promise to restore the desolate wastelands is a cruel joke, and the industry's fallback position, that the flattened landscapes will provide space
for economic development, is the weak punchline. America adores its Adirondacks and reveres the Rockies, while the Appalachian Mountains -- with their impoverished and alienated population -- are dismantled by coal moguls who dominate state politics and have little to prevent them from blasting the physical landscape to smithereens.

full post


also see The myth of clean coal
ok so 5 minutes was the just a start ....i love these mountain people !!

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