Today the US Congress is arguing with the Whitehouse over whether the slaughter of Armenians in Turkey 80 years ago was genocide or not. I have not heard them discuss any resolutions about the genocide of Native Americans, and I don't see them trying to stop the destruction of Appalachia and the American citizens who live there right now by coal companies who are blowing the tops off their mountains, destroying communities and ecosystems and poisoning an entire area of our country for all time.
Our country gets 50% of it's electricity from burning coal. Burning that coal produces 40% our country's CO2 emissions. It's time to phase that out, right? Then how come there are another 129 coal burners in the works right now? In what kind of Kafkaesque world does that make sense, when we are hearing about melting ice caps and mass extinction of endangered species due to Global Warming every day?
Why, in a country that purports itself to be a Democracy, and has laws protecting it's environment and the rights of it's citizens, are we engaging in a systematic destruction of the environment of an entire region of our country and the lives of the citizens who live there?
This is a rural sector of our country, where the population is poor, the votes are small, and the corporations that profit from it's destruction are from out of state, make gigantic political contributions, and leave when their deed is done. They play people against each other and tell them that the "environmentalists" want to take their jobs away. But when the coal has been burned up to power the wide screen TVs and stainless steel fridges of the city dwellers, their jobs will still be gone, along with their farms, their fields, their livestock, the wildlife, and the future of their children, if not their children's lives.
This is not the best way to "power the grid." It's not sustainable. It's not moral, and it's not right. Some of our presidential candidates, who are US Senators, have said they will stop this if elected to the Whiehouse. Tell them, "If you want our vote for president, then show us what you are doing to stop it now..."
The Government Sanctioned Blasting of Appalachia
Our country gets 50% of it's electricity from burning coal. Burning that coal produces 40% our country's CO2 emissions. It's time to phase that out, right? Then how come there are another 129 coal burners in the works right now? In what kind of Kafkaesque world does that make sense, when we are hearing about melting ice caps and mass extinction of endangered species due to Global Warming every day?
Why, in a country that purports itself to be a Democracy, and has laws protecting it's environment and the rights of it's citizens, are we engaging in a systematic destruction of the environment of an entire region of our country and the lives of the citizens who live there?
This is a rural sector of our country, where the population is poor, the votes are small, and the corporations that profit from it's destruction are from out of state, make gigantic political contributions, and leave when their deed is done. They play people against each other and tell them that the "environmentalists" want to take their jobs away. But when the coal has been burned up to power the wide screen TVs and stainless steel fridges of the city dwellers, their jobs will still be gone, along with their farms, their fields, their livestock, the wildlife, and the future of their children, if not their children's lives.
This is not the best way to "power the grid." It's not sustainable. It's not moral, and it's not right. Some of our presidential candidates, who are US Senators, have said they will stop this if elected to the Whiehouse. Tell them, "If you want our vote for president, then show us what you are doing to stop it now..."
The Government Sanctioned Blasting of Appalachia
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The True Cost Of Coal
by Robert Kennedy Jr.
"In fact, there is no such thing as "clean coal." And coal is only "cheap" if one ignores its calamitous externalized costs. In addition to global warming, these include dead forests and sterilized lakes from acid rain, poisoned fisheries in 49 states and children with damaged brains and crippled health from mercury emissions, millions of asthma attacks and lost work days and thousands dead annually from ozone and particulates. Coal's most catastrophic and permanent impacts are from mountaintop removal mining. If the American people could see what I have seen from the air and ground during my many trips to the coalfields of Kentucky and West Virginia: leveled mountains, devastated communities, wrecked economies and ruined lives, there would be a revolution in this country. "
Read the rest of Robert's blog here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-f-kennedy-jr/coals-true-cost_b_74738.html
The myth of cheap coal is destrying the soul of America. Go to the I Love Mountains Action and Resource Center to find out how this issue affects you, and to take a stand:
http://www.ilovemountains.org/myconnection/
peace
I sit inside my home in Letcher County, Kentucky, underneath the shadow of a mountain top removal stripmine listening to one of your songs "Moon on the Wild Rose" hoping to drown out the sound of the drag line, and the back up beep of the machinery -- and I say "thank you." Some times we in Appalachia, wonder if any one out there in the world cares that our homes and communities are being destroyed, taken away truckload by truckload, day in and day out.
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