I recently went on a trip with two awesome people from Rainforest Action Network, Branden Barber and Debra Erenberg, to visit Appalachia country in West Virginia.  The purpose of the trip was to see first hand what’s happening with mountaintop removal (MTR) due to the affects of coal strip mining.  Its one thing to read about and see pictures of MTR, but it’s absolutely another thing to actually see it and to hear the stories from the people who live there.  What I saw and learned left me feeling sad, angry, overwhelmed and deeply affected.

We had the great fortune of meeting with four equally impressive people in the area.  Each works with a different non-profit group that is fighting to stop this insane large scale devastation.  Mike Roselle from Climate Ground Zero talked about the campaigns of non-violent civil disobedience work that this new and emerging organization is doing where local and non-local volunteers are putting themselves at great risk for trying to stop MTR.  Mike is great.  He is truly a leader in the national and international environmental movement.  I know I want him on my side to stand up for a worthy cause.  It’s tough work, but thanks to Mike and the people at Climate Ground Zero, they’re bringing national attention to this horrid practice of MTR. More »

Finding your way to Climate Ground Zero is easy if you know where you’re going.  Well, even then I’ve learned that Google will lead me astray from time to time. But in terms of what CGZ is, well, I thought I knew.

I didn’t have a clue.

Well, maybe that’s unfair.

I knew what was going on in the mountains of Appalachia, I knew that people were fighting a powerful company that is extracting coal and destroying mountains and communities, and I knew that Climate Ground Zero refers to where the main battle for our global climate is going on – here in the heart of Coal Country, in the US where we produce the lion’s share, per capita, of the world’s greenhouse gases and half of that comes from coal. I knew that this battle is seriously heating up. But I didn’t know how serious.

From Google Earth

Of course it’s serious that a company is mining coal with machines bigger than office buildings and tremendous amounts of explosives, carried daily in tankers that rip along these narrow two lane highways.

And of course it’s serious when people’s families are endangered, their homes destroyed by floods caused by the mining, and the mountains that sustain so much life, so much diversity, are being wiped out for corporate profit. In this area that is stunningly beautiful, terrible things are indeed happening.

Since 1991 Massey Energy has led the pack in the race to take all the coal available from the once-hallowed mountains of Appalachia. They have systematically led the charge and taken the lion’s share of profit in the most efficient form of coal mining available, Mountaintop Removal.

The EPA continues to grant the permits that allow this company to employ far fewer workers than ever before in the history of coal mining. An underground mine used to employ as many as 500 workers. Now these operations can employ as few as 19. More »

After a series of challenges yesterday (the pilot tapping futilely on the little “check battery” light and the cancelled flight to Google’s outdated belief that there is no mine where that road used to be) we finally found ourselves in Rock Creek, West Virginia, Ground Zero for Mountain Top Removal coal mining. This is a place like no other I’ve been. In fact, this whole area has been one surprise after another, and we haven’t even visited any actual MTR sites as yet.

For starters, West Virginia is GREEN in the lushest, brightest, shadiest kind of way. There are myriad wildflowers and over 150 different kinds of trees. The hills surround you everywhere you are – except, of course where the hills have been removed, where the mountain tops have been stripped of their coal and then dumped into the adjacent valleys, the hollows; where a river’s headwaters begin and where numerous plants and animals and insects make a remarkable, complex, beautiful environment. Frogs and lightning bugs, lizards and squirrels, bears and deer and rabbits and racoons and you name it – this place is the real deal and has even been identified as the oldest deciduous forest in North America. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Lucy_Braun)

Here there is beauty as well as strife. The number of houses that are uninhabitable or in need of repair is surprising and disconcerting. More businesses seem to have closed than to be open in the many small towns you pass through; towns like Masseyville, Whiteville (just after Whitesville), Marsh Fork, Arnett, Pettry Bottom and here, Rock Creek.

More »

So I made it to Appalachia, but as you probably saw, the tree-sit was already over. We spent the evening hanging out with a bunch of activists and community members, hearing stories about their exploits over the past few days. It was a truly impressive operation!

While two tree-sitters sat in jail waiting for bail to be set (ultimately reported at $25,000 each (!) for misdemeanor charges). We heard about how Massey workers set up a 24-hour vigil to harass, threaten and even torture the two. Workers reportedly set off various types of extremely loud noises at irregular intervals to make it impossible for the tree sitters to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time. We were told that they cut down nearby trees and took a chainsaw to the trees that the sitters were in (stopping short of cutting them down while the sitters were still there).

The more I saw and heard, the more I experienced déjà vu. This trip to Appalachia has so many similarities to my fact finding trip last year to visit to Indigenous communities impacted by palm oil plantations in Malaysia. How so?
• Both are (or were) beautiful forested areas with flowing rivers and thriving local cultures.
• Both are being exploited for the benefit of corporations that promise a good living to community members, but don’t deliver.
• Rivers are being polluted and community members are left with toxic fish to eat.
• Bottled water is the only safe choice.
• Both are company towns (or states), where local government bends over backwards to contort the law to favor the industry over the people, where local police offer no protection, and where local media won’t say a word against the company.
• Both are home to determined people standing up against all odds to save their communities and their heritage.
• People in both areas face trumped up charges, excessive bail and other systematic controls designed to scare off others from speaking out.
• Above all, both of them need our help!

If you can make it to Appalachia to support the struggle, go! If you can’t, help expose what’s going on by writing about, telling your friends, doing a classroom presentation, etc. And tell the EPA that it’s time to stop this horrible practice once and for all!

It’s comforting to think that what’s happening in Malaysia couldn’t happen in a “mature democracy” like the USA. Think again.

(Posted by Branden for Daryl who joined RAN’s Michael Brune and others to protest MTR in West Virginia last week.)

Why would I fly across the country on my own dime knowing I would most likely end up in jail in one of the poorest parts of America?

Well, have you ever heard of MTR?

Don’t feel bad, my friends are intelligent well-read and informed people, but most of them had never heard of MTR (Mountain Top Removal) either.

So, I went to Coal River to help bring much needed attention to this hidden, criminal (but somehow legal) form of mining. I was honored to be joining an inspiringly brave group of concerned Americans, which included – NASA climate scientist James Hansen who was among the first to sound the alarm on the climate crisis. The sharp, charismatic, 94 year old, former West Virginia U.S. Representative and Secretary of State Ken Hechler, who was the first congressman to introduce a Federal bill to abolish strip mining in 1971. (If passed the bill could have prevented this mess we find ourselves in). And Michael Brune, executive director of Rainforests Action Network who is committed to ending to this terrible, destructive practice. I was deeply moved to be arrested with those affected by MTR in Kentucky, and the many local residents fighting for their very lives, including a half dozen senior citizens, canes, walkers and all.

Me with Dr. James Hansen at Marsh Fork Elementary School

Mountain Top Removal is a devastatingly destructive form of mining and has already destroyed 2,000,000 acres in the Appalachian Mountains.

Coal companies have literally blown up over 500 mountain tops to access the coal seams and then dumped the refuse into the valleys below, killing over 3000 miles of HEADWATER streams. The EPA just gave the go ahead for an additional 42 mountaintops to be blown off with another 6 permits pending.

Mountain Top Removal leaves behind a virtual hideous moonscape of devastated earth, billions of gallons of poisonous toxic sludge, and boarded up towns with dramatically high rates of cancer. More »

Last night Maria Gunnoe received a Goldman Prize for her work to end mountain top removal coal mining (MTR) – and protect her home. This is an issue that we are all a part of and Maria believes that, as energy consumers, we have a responsibility to know where our electricity is coming from. “When you flip a switch on, there is a 52% chance that you are destroying the water, air and land of where I live.”  Read more about this amazing activist, who was a 2006 World Rainforest Awards recipient at RAN’s annual shindig, REVEL.

Jeff Biggers: Mother Gunnoe: Mountaintop Removal Organizer Wins Goldman “Environmental Nobel” Prize.

“Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living” Mother Jones

Listen here, King Coal.

Maria “Mother” Gunnoe, a fearless community organizer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition in West Virginia, whose home sits on the frontlines of an atrocious mountaintop removal operation in Boone County, has just been awarded the prestigious Goldman Prize. Considered the “Nobel prize for the environment,” the award recognizes a grassroots leader on each continent and their extraordinary actions to protect the natural world and human rights.

Gunnoe is the second anti-mountaintop removal activist in Appalachia to win the Goldman Prize in the last six years: West Virginian Judy Bonds was recognized in 2003 for her work against devastating strip mining operations in the Coal River Mountain area.

More »

Huffington Post: Jerry Cope: The DC Shuffle; Saving the World From Death By Coal.

Right in the heart of our nation’s capitol is a coal fired power plant which kills. This is not unusual, all coal power plants kill. They are the largest anthropogenic source of the CO2 emissions (over 40%) which have now reached high enough levels of concentration in our atmosphere that many of the world’s leading experts in climate change fear the tipping point may have already been reached and catastrophic climate change may now be inevitable. There is no such thing as clean coal. The is no such thing as safe coal. Coal may very well end life on this planet as we know it. We absolutely must stop burning coal and we must do it yesterday.

The number 350 is now the most important number in the history of the human race. That is the safe level of atmospheric concentration of CO2 as expressed in parts per million. This threshold limit has already been exceeded with levels currently at 386PPM and rising. We are now creating a world vastly different from the one which has been so conducive to the biological diversity and global ecosystem which allowed the human species to evolve and human civilization to flourish. This is not a secret, although the energy industry would have you think it is, nor is it uncertain or alarmist. They are spending an exponentially increasing amount of funds on advertising, lobbying, and disinformation in an effort to cast doubt on what is now scientific certainty. In the last twelve months the number of climate change lobbyists on the Hill has increased 300%. The coal industry carries not only a big stick, but large piles of cash to go along with it. Judging from their actions and attitudes, one wonders if they don’t have another planet stashed somewhere close by that they can bail to in a few years while the Earth dies.

So what’s a person to do?

March 2nd, 2009 was historic — a shining example of what citizens in a democracy can achieve when united in a common cause. That cause is eliminating coal-fired power plants in the United States and the insanely destructive environmental degradation caused by coal mining and related activities.

The Front Line

A group of over 2,500 people from all across the country marched on the coal fired power plant in our nation’s capitol which for over 100 years has supplied heat and electricity to Congress by burning coal. In reality it was a shuffle much more than a march, there were simply too many people to take those nice long-stride parade steps which could properly be termed a march. The slush from fresh snow on the city streets and sidewalks made for a slow shuffle of happy courageous feet, many willing to risk arrest. Leading the march were the two men who first warned the world of the climate crisis rapidly approaching twenty and thirty years ago respectively; Bill McKibben the acclaimed author and activist, and James Hansen the director of NASA’s Goddard Center in Manhattan who was the first prominent scientist to testify before Congress that global warming posed a serious threat to all life on the planet as we know it. On the front lines they were joined arm in arm by Wendall Berry, Robert Kennedy Jr., Daryl Hannah, Kathy Mattea, Terry Tempest Williams, Vandava Shiva, Gus Speth, John Quigley, and Mike Clark. The march was organized and endorsed by over forty environmental organizations led by Greenpeace, the Chesapeake Climate Action Network and The Rainforest Action Network.

I asked my new dear friend Terry Tempest Williams in looking back on the weekend what her thoughts were. Her words as is her entire being are luminous;

I thought that Monday’s Climate Change Action was full of vitality and presence. What I realized however, as the day wore on, was that this was really about energizing, engaging, and empowering the students. They were so strong and thoughtful in their gestures. Many were willing to risk arrest. Others were willing to be of support. The students I spoke with were determined and dedicated to making a statement by their presence that the path we have been on is not the path to the future. Their lives are committed to acts of conscience and consequence. This is what moved me most.
Jessie Carrier stood for hours in the cold blocking one of the side entrances. In those hours, she considered her actions, the course of her life, and what she wanted to commit her talents toward — “My heart was quivering.” she told me. “I became scared. And then, in time, I became calm and clear on what I was doing and why.” A young woman began to dance for her.
“She gave me energy,” she said. “I joined her.” Both young women danced. Movement. “I realized we are growing a movement.”

And then I think about what Wendell Berry said, when asked why he was there. “To begin a new kind of conversation.”

Yes. A new kind of conversation. A new kind of movement. We are now realizing that economic issues are environmental issues are social issues that are issues of social justice. This is my hope and faith as a citizen, that this kind of reflective activism can move us
collectively, one person at a time toward an open space of democracy that inspires a different kind of relationship to community in the largest sense, both human and wild. Direct Action is not an abstraction. Monday’s action was spirited and real. Empathy is a word that comes to mind as we walked arm in arm in solidarity. Climate Change.

Kathy Mattea & Terry Tempest Williams
For four hours all five entrance gates to the plant were blocked. An impressive number of law enforcement many with riot gear stood by and watched. No arrests were made, to the great disappointment of many including my brave friend Daryl Hannah who has been arrested before standing up for the environment, or sitting in a tree.

Closed: The Main Gate

Gus Speth said to the audience “There’s nothing wrong with the Holocene, it’s ending it that is crazy.” We were all amazed by the energy of the young people and as Kathy Mattea said, “I love it that we can now support them.”

More actions in the form of civil disobedience directed against coal power plants are planned in the near future. As the world prepares for the UN COP15 Conference in Copenhagen this December, it is a critical year for, as Bill McKibben said, “creating a political space for a climate treaty to be finalized.”

Time’s up.

Yesterday morning, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s coal fired power plant in Harriman Tennessee spilled approximately 500 million gallons of toxic coal ash into the Tennessee River and surrounding areas. Here’s the blog post from The Alliance for Appalachia’s website:

TVA’s Coal Ash Sludge Pond Bursts

This Tennessee TVA spill is over 40-48 times bigger than the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska, if local news accounts are correct. This is a huge environmental disaster of epic proportions; approximately 500 million gallons of nasty black coal ash flowed into tributaries of the Tennessee River – the water supply for Chattanooga TN and millions of people living downstream in Alabama, Tennessee and Kentucky. We’re “lucky” it was sludgy and slow moving, or thousands could have died. Click here to see an amazing aerial video of the spill – the big chunks in the river are mounds of coal ash.

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Suprisingly, the industry still says that coal will be “clean” if we find out how to sequester the carbon– here is more terrible proof they are wrong. On Monday, 39 groups, including our friends with the Citizens Coal Council and The Alliance for Appalachia banded together to ask President-Elect Obama to overturn Bush’s recent attempts to de-regulate coal ash even more.

In some twist of grim irony, the night before these groups sent out their demand for increased regulation of coal ash, 4 to 6 feet of toxic coal ash and ice cold slurry burst out of a faulty TVA containment pond in Eastern Tennessee and destroyed 12 homes, 400 acres, and wrecked a train; you can read more about it in the Knoxville News Sentinel. This break isn’t the first terrible sludge dam disaster. It is a huge tragedy, and we won’t know for years how the mercury, arsenic, and other toxic heavy metals like beryllium and cadmium commonly found in coal ash will have impacted the local community and wildlife.

Coal ash is what is leftover when you burn coal. Coal ash is an enormous problem throughout the US. It is more radioactive than nuclear waste, according to Scientific American and is under-regulated. It is made into concrete, drywall, and as a road building material. People living near coal ash dumps have been estimated to have up to 900 times the national cancer rates.

I might hazard a guess that that cancer figure just increased even more in eastern Tennessee.

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Aerial video of the spill can be seen here, and coverage of the spill in the Tennessean is here.

This tragedy underscores the need for renewable energy – now! Coal is dirty from cradle to grave, and it hopefully won’t take another story like this one before our society abandons it in favor of safe, clean, green energy.

Support RAN’s campaign to stop dirty energy and sign the petition to demand that Citi and Bank of America – the largest funders of new coal-fired power plants – stop financing environmental destruction and start financing a renewable energy future.

-Annie

Last Friday found me up Kayford Mountain in West Virginia, gazing at a horrific Mountaintop Removal site and wishing that Ken Lewis, CEO of Bank of America, were by my side. I had just spent all of last week in the area, meeting with friends and allies, drinking in the incredible scenery, dodging coal trucks on narrow windy roads, seeing the scars where mountains used to stand and hearing outrageous stories about contaminated water from coal mining. It was a moving, inspiring and ultimately bizarre few days…because who do you think I ran into up that big ol’ mountain? None other than three of our friends from Bank of America.

What were they doing there you ask? Well apparently, they heard all the ruckus we’ve all been making – about Mountaintop Removal and the fact that their very own bank has been financing the practice to the hilt, and decided to come on down and check it out themselves. They were greeted by the famous Larry Gibson, an unbelievably charming gentleman who’s cabin is perched right up on top of Kayford on one of the last patches of un-blasted land. His family cemetery hasn’t been so lucky–it was blown up a few years ago by Massey Energy as they made their way down to a six inch seam of coal hundreds of feet below his family’s resting bones. Larry was joined by friends from Coal River Mountain Watch, Save Our Cumberland Mountains, Appalachian Voices and, of course, yours truly and our friends from NRDC who were accompanying Bank of America on the trip.

It was odd and not entirely comfortable seeing these city-bound bankers come face-to-face with the people who are impacted by their financing: the ex-union-coal-miner, the Appalachian women who are willing to do anything to protect their kin and just simply the people who live in the shadow of these threatened mountains, many of whom are sick and dying because of the way coal is being mined here. The bankers didn’t look at ease, but to their credit they were good sports – tramping out to the edge of the blast site in terrific heat, asking questions and generally gathering as many stories and facts as they could on their short visit. It wasn’t clear to me what exactly they intend to do with this information, nor what the next steps will be, but one thing became abundantly clear by the end of the trip—Bank of America is feeling pressure. As they were leaving, I thanked them for the effort they had made, and as one of them gripped my hand in the firmest handshake I’ve ever had…..she said calmly: “I believe you’re having a day of action against us today.”

Oh really? How awkward (I thought). What I said was, “it isn’t us.” Because, you see – it wasn’t. Sure, RAN launched a campaign against Bank of America last November, and it’s true that we’ve been working as hard as we can to convince them to stop financing coal. But it’s not just “us” who are keeping that pressure up. It’s all the hundreds of groups around the country who have taken on the campaign and are committed to seeing an end to coal financing. It’s all of you. So thank you. Because make no mistake – Bank of America flying over Appalachia is important – no bank has ever made this effort before, and it shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that they are impacted by the campaign we are all running to end MTR and dirty coal financing. It shows that all the hard work of our allies along with RAN is paying off, and it should inspire us to keep up the pressure.

And it shows that Bank of America has the integrity to investigate the impacts of their financing. It may be a small step, but it’s a very important one.

So Ken, if you’re listening? I missed you. We missed you. But don’t worry, if we have anything to do with it Kayford Mountain won’t be going anywhere, so you can come and visit. That’s a promise.

Activists from around North Carolina have come together in Charlotte to take citizen action against Bank of America in their own company town. To highlight the socio-economic abuses perpetrated by the bank against the communities and ecosystems of Appalachia, several ATMs and bank branches have been shut down, roped off and declared “global warming crime scenes.” Bank employees have been witnessing their employer being called out for its role in financing the wholesale destruction of the Appalachian Mountains and supporting King Coal’s ongoing tyranny over the Appalachian people. People were cautioned about our common proximity to the impacts of global warming – as a reminder of our common responsibility towards climate justice.

Activists in Chapel Hill, NC took further action against climate change and mountain top removal, this time bringing the message to Bank of America Director W.Steven Jones – also the Dean of Kenan-Flagler Business School at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Posters were put up in and around the UNC business school with pictures of Jones’ colleague – CEO Ken Lewis and information on the bank’s socially unethical and environmentally disastrous investment portfolio.

Activists also postered climate disaster posters in the boroughs of Charlotte’s finest – to remind them of our common future. We hope they will appreciate this effort to reach out to them directly, and choose to use their positions of power and influence to call on Bank of America to end its financing of massive social and ecological destruction during this critical time of global climate change.

One of B of A’s many large-scale coal investments is a loan to Duke Energy for the construction of their new Cliffside coal plant, located between Charlotte and Asheville, NC. This plant is currently facing several legal challenges and massive citizen opposition. The climate disaster posters call for the cancellation of Cliffside as well as an end to all of B of A’s investments in dirty energy projects.

Abigail