Coal Speaks for Itself

[unhappycamper]

Coal Speaks for Itself
by Maria Gunnoe
Published on Thursday, September 23, 2010 by CommonDreams.org

Appalachia Rising is a movement led by the people of the Southern Appalachian Mountains. People from all over America will come together on September 27th 2010 to demand the abolition of mountaintop removal (MTR) coal extraction in Appalachia. We are not visiting DC to attack coal as its supporters would have you believe. We are a non-violent movement; I don’t see any of us attacking anything or anyone. Coal speaks its own truth and I believe that truth is spoken in catastrophes such as the April 5th mine disaster at Upper Big Branch Mine and the truth that every day Appalachian mountains are leveled and their valleys are filled by waste. Our communities are flooded and our water is poisoned just to “keep on the lights” in 25 countries.

Coal speaks its truths in what it leaves behind for the people that sacrifice so much for the coal companies' bottom line. The people get nothing in return but destroyed ancestral, historic lands and communities such as Blair, the battleground for today’s United Mine Workers Association. “We the people” get the poisoned water, the polluted land, the silica-laden air, the bad health, and the diminished hope of ever having a future. This is what we have to show for 200 years of mining coal. Where is the preached prosperity? We have no desire to bash coal. Coal speaks for itself.

There are nearly 3.5 million pounds of explosives used EACH DAY in West Virginia alone. People throughout Appalachia couldn't find the political support to stop the attack on our homeland and we began to organize. While our county, state and federal leaders turned a blind eye and deaf ear to us…We formed a movement. Appalachians have depended on our democracy (the American people) to help defend us as our politicians and regulatory agencies have not.

The previous administration’s Environmental Protection Agency rubber-stamped MTR mining permits in the name of “homeland security”. Currently there have been new guidelines set within the EPA to seriously curtail MTR. As Appalachians and Americans we say this is not enough. We work daily to ABOLISH mountaintop removal. We’re not after another piece of legislation to justify or excuse it. The practice of blowing up mountains to supply electricity MUST stop. Our very lives depend on it.

These mountains are the lifeblood of our existence. Our ancestors are veterans of ALL world wars. This is the part of our country that they fought to defend beginning over 200 years ago. Our soldier’s resting places are often at the peaks of these mountains. Their cemeteries are now surrounded by miles of nothing but rubble and are left inaccessible to families. Where majestic, breath taking views use to overlook the nearby valley towns, it is now devastation as far as the eye can see. One thing to think about is the fact that mountaintop removal and communities CANNOT co-exist. This type of mining will never benefit communities nearby. The areas that Katrina hit are rebuilding. There is NO rebuilding after MTR. The towns are simply erased.

[lunatica]

1. I fully support and agree with Appalachia Rising

May this be the beginning of a real movement that will change the energy policies of this country.

[ThomWV]

2. +1 from Northern West Virginia (K&R too)

[drm604]

3. My father grew up in Appalachia (western PA).

My grandfather suffered from black lung. As I child being take to visit my grandparents I saw firsthand the grinding poverty. My grandparents had no indoor plumbing. Prosperity? Yea, right.

Fortunately for us, my father left the area and raised a family in the Philly suburbs.

[madokie]

4. We have to do better

right now we have the fox guarding the hen house, so to say, and that needs to stop and sooner rather than later. We've got to change the way we live and the way we create and use our electrical energy. Whats the alternative to mountain top removal, moving the miners underground? I don't see that as a solution so we've got to rethink this whole apparatus of how we go about our daily lives. We need to move our manufacturing back to America first and then locate the industries with available energy and work force in mind. Right now I can go over to the 4 lane hiway near here that runs from Siloam Springs Arkansas to Tulsa Ok and I'll see that a good portion of the autos on the road will be carrying one person and that portion will have Arkansas tags on them, some of these people are driving a hundred miles one way to get to work each day. Why not relocate some of the industries that they are going to over in Arkansas.? If we'd demand our auto companies start building EV's that we could buy and drive that would go a long ways in better utilizing the coal that is being mined out of those mountains with the added benefit of cleaner air for all of us to breath. What I'm saying is we're living a lifestyle that is not sustainable and its been obvious for many years now but not many are taking it seriously.

I think we need to spend some time in figuring out how to use the heat that is available a few miles under many of us as our primary source of energy. We've got oil wells going down miles now so why can't we get to the pockets of geothermal energy that is in some cases lies closer to the surface than some of these oil wells. Fracking for natural gas is not a good thing either as we're poisoning our water and none of us can live very long without water. When I see the miles long coal trains coming down the tracks with hundreds of tons of coal its real obvious that what we're doing now is not right. Our coal is coming from Wyoming for the most part and I'm sure they have the same issues there as the Appalachians have.

With the present nuclear technology we can't or shouldn't go there but sometimes I wonder if the nuclear power industry were to be jerked up by the seat of their collective asses that they couldn't address the problems that nuclear power brings to the table and I don't mean a new way of lying to us but a new way of going about utilizing nuclear energy.

Oh well, sorry for the ramblin'. Looking at the big picture all I see is a lot of problems that no one, it seems, are working on.

[era veteran]

5. K & R

A special fuck you to "Friends of Coal". Get your asses out of Lexington and Boca Raton and go live in the mountains you fucked up. All these years of extracting wealth from OUR land and taking it elsewhere. FUCK YOU

[hunter]

6. Ban coal.

It's shocking that we accept this filthy, destructive, and dangerous 19th century technology here in the 21st century.