I've heard about this practice for years, seen photos, met people who live in these communities. But seeing it with my own eyes was truly transformational.
I shot video with my Flip camera - this one shows the tiny town of Montgomery Creek - one of the remaining creeks in an area where many creeks no longer exist. The beginning is shot from a car window. The car is being driven by a salt-of-the earth man who took us to his hometown and into his home to show us the devastation. In the back seat of the car was the oxygen tank he uses because he has black lung from being a miner.
The second video starts in the plane, taking off from a flat runway where their once was a mountain. What's left behind looks like Southwestern mesas. And there, beside those flat-top mountains, instead of valleys, there were more flat bridges to the next mesa, where the mining waste had been dumped.
Frequently, the filled-in valleys served as dams to hold back ponds of chemical waste, unnatural in color, hovering above the valleys below.
In addition to the flat mountaintop removal sites, we also saw what's called contour mining, where machines go around the mountain, creating level steps, and take the coal out there. I'm told that contour mining can be done responsibly, as miners take the coal out of one section, they can replace the rock and dirt they've moved aside to get the coal. But we saw no sign of this alleged responsible contour mining. We saw bare rock steps, with the dirt and topsoil dumped below.
We met people who live amongst the mining. They were united in their fight against mountain-top removal, but divided on what to do about coal in general. Many of them worked in coal mining - in deep-shaft mines where more than a thousand men would work, often for good wages. Now, they tell me, it takes 5 men to blow apart a mountain and plow out the coal, and bulldoze the rest into the valley to create a hollow fill. Five men, thanks to technology. And someone is getting rich. But not the people who live among the destruction. They are poorer than they were a generation ago.
Usually when I think and write about energy I look to technology to solve problems. And though technology has hastened the ruin of Eastern Kentucky, technology can also be the answer there. Eastern Kentucky needs an economic base. Jobs. A future. Without mountain-top removal mining.
Take a look at the map of wind energy that exists or is being built across the US. Notice that one of the states with no wind whatsoever is Kentucky.
Now look up close at the potential wind map for Kentucky. There is clearly potential for wind in exactly the areas of south-eastern Kentucky that are being flattened -- -- but of course the potential for wind there decreases when the mountains disappear. So Kentuckians are trading their mountains now for their clean energy future. And it's permanent.
]]>Ah Nature. I work all year to protect it. Why has it turned against me on vacation this year? No sooner had we left Washington than we were assaulted by everything from rain, pollen, fog, sunburn, poison ivy, and — addition to the aforementioned insects — ticks, mosquitoes, and a disappointing lack of fireflies.
I am an urbanist, meaning — to me — that I live in the city where people should dwell so that during the week I can enjoy a 10-minute subway commute, lively community, and an energy-efficient, low-impact existence. Sure trees were cut down to build my neighborhood, but that was 100 years ago.
Then, for weekends and vacations, we head out into Nature, the kind without McMansions or 7-Elevens or even jet skis. We swim where there's no chlorine, walk where there's no pavement, cook where there's no roof. Through this, I remember many of the reasons why working to protect the environment is endlessly worthwhile despite the occasional frustrations of, say, the Bush administration denying that heat-trapping greenhouse gasses are pollution. During these sorties into Nature, I also hope to instill in my children this love of the outdoors that trumps their admiration for TV and dump trucks. Usually, it's blissful.
We came for our bite of nature. This summer, nature bit back.
Now I am hard at work at coming to terms with this. That, in its essence, our attempts to make a world in which no one gets bitten by a poisonous spider, steps on a bee, gets sunburn or poison ivy, or even gets wet in a rainstorm, are a big part of what got us in this heap of trouble we're in with Nature.
So here's where I'm at. In my little world of a small townhouse in Washington, DC I will expect to stay adequately warm, dry, cool, shaded, clean, and — after inspecting all my screens once I can finally travel home — insect free. I will expect the same in my office at NRDC. However — despite the searing pain in my leg and all the other ailments Nature has inflicted on my family members, I will not expect the same in Nature. I am here to be in the Outdoors on its own terms. I am not interested in some Nature-lite where a dozen cans of herbicide and pesticide later I can sit on a plastic chair on some mutant-bred imported species of carpet-like lawn-grass. One of the reasons I value Nature is that it must be on its own terms — otherwise, it's not Nature anymore. Any attempts to control it ruin it for me. However, keep in mind, as I write this, I am on a high dose of painkillers.
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