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.

Mike Roselle (at right)

Judy Bonds from Coal River Mountain Watch (CRMW) comes from a family that has lived in Coal River Valley for 10 generations.  She clearly and powerfully talked to us about the rich history and culture of the people there and the mountains they live in.  But now, medicinal herbs such as ginseng, black cohosh and goldenseal are disappearing due to MTR.  Wild boars are almost extinct and the survival of 150 species of trees is being threatened.  People are being forced to move from their homes where they have lived for generations.  Where people were once connected to their land, they are now getting denied their culture.  It’s becoming a cultural genocide.  Gratefully, Judy and CRMW are both working to stop this environmental and cultural destruction and doing what they can to save and rebuild their communities.

Judy Bonds

Maria Gunnoe from Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition (OVEC) has family roots in the region dating back to the early 1800s.  She still lives on her family land, even though mountaintops around her have disappeared and the polluted river running by her house has flooded many times due to the lack of vegetation.

Maria Gunnoe

She took us on a tour of the area where we saw yet another town, Lindytown, turning into a deserted and destroyed ghost town because Massey Coal is taking over.  We heard about the polluted rivers and polluted air and the fact that more people including young children are getting cancer and dying from the toxins.  We heard about all the violence coming from Massey Coal to the local people there who are standing up against MTR.  Death threats, homes burned, dogs poisoned and delivered to bus stops for children to see, horses poisoned, verbal harassments, conflicts in stores, and attempts to run cars off the road are all now happening.  Are these acts necessary?  Is this really America?  This is very hard for me to understand.  It saddens and angers me to hear such stories.  I respect Maria and her values and thank her and OVEC for speaking up and educating communities about the environmental dangers of MTR.

Larry Gibson - Keeper of Kayford Mountain

Larry Gibson from Keeper of the Mountains Foundation is an impressive man who is also standing up against MTR.  His family has lived on or near Kayford Mountain since the late 1700s.  We walked a very short distance from his home there to the edge of one of the coal strip mining projects.  We looked down to see a 12,000 acre flattened gravel yard…an area that was once Kayford Mountain.  No picture can adequately convey what I saw and what it must feel like to live in an area that was once a beautiful, rich and secluded mountain, but has now been turned into a massive, ugly and barren open-pit dirt yard.  It’s mind boggling.  It’s beyond destructive.  It’s beyond unconsciousness.  Larry isn’t a brave man, he’s just a man standing up and speaking up for what is right.  And it’s right to save the mountains, preserve the values of the mountain culture and stop coal strip mining from destroying the history of these people and the glory of these mountains.  Many thanks to Larry for risking his life and telling his unbelievably sad story.

From above the destruction is extreme

It was a pleasure and honor to meet such passionate, concerned, authentic and caring people.  Against personal threats and other acts of hate crimes, these people are standing up not only for their land, culture, heritage, families, health and lives, but they are standing up for the health of the planet by dealing with the serious problem of coal contributing to climate change.  They all need support in whatever ways we can give them.  For information on the above non-profits and how to help, visit:

www.climategroundzero.org
www.crmw.net
www.ohvec.org
www.mountainkeeper.org

Finally, many thanks to Rainforest Action Network (RAN) for allowing me to join them on this valuable yet difficult trip.  RAN is a phenomenal non-profit group that affectively takes aggressive action to protect environments throughout the entire world.  RAN is supporting these groups in WV by actively fighting for a coal-free energy future.  According to Judy Bonds, RAN’s corporate campaigns to stop major banks from funding coal, logging, and tar sands are making a big difference.  RAN is also offering training, fundraising support and general advice to these smaller WV groups.

For everyone involved in standing up against MTR….I deeply thank you.

Sue Thompson
Boulder, CO

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.

The West Va Department of Environmental Protection, the DEP or “Don’t Expect Protection” as they are known euphamistically, continues to allow this company to clearcut the forests in this incredibly rich biome, an area that has been identified as the oldest deciduous forest in North America and the literal source of the great diversity of forests North America once supported. The EPA continues to grant permits that allow the mountaintops to be pulverized with explosives, the coal seams gouged out and processed, and the remaining rubble to be pushed into the valleys, or “hollers”, which has so far led to the utter annihilation of 2000 miles of streams and waterways and countless plants and animals. Of the estimated 900 mountaintops in Appalachia, over half of them have been “dropped” and destroyed for the “cheap” coal that lies beneath.

Massive MTR Operation - thanks to Southwings for taking us up

It has also led to the deaths of residents through uncontrollable flooding as well as the tragic death of 3-year old Jeremy Davidson when a massive boulder dislodged during operations and crushed him to death when it rolled though his bed while he slept. http://www.ohvec.org/newsletters/woc_2005_02/article_15.html

As a parent this tragedy has extra meaning for me. As a citizen, one would expect greater accountability and protection. Not here and not now at least. Business continues as usual, although there is a case filed by the parents who hope their son’s tragic loss may amount to something more that will provide protection for residents.

Why is mining allowed so near residents? Because state and federal laws allow it. Laws prohibit surface mining within 300 feet of an occupied dwelling and within 100 feet of a public road. Otherwise, go for it.

Opposition has been growing, slowly over time, but that’s often how it goes with wars. And make no mistake, there is a war brewing in Appalachia’s mountains, and so far those who are stepping up do so to defend their homes, their families and the mountains that in many cases have been home to many generations of their families. This is a war that has the classic elements of a deeply oppressed people and a powerful overlord that has outright contempt for the people who have every right to continue making their homes here. And that contempt shows itself in many ways.

Clean, carbon neutral coal?

Depopulation, common here, is a practice that promotes an exodus of residents from an area by making life so hard, so dangerous, and so frightening, that they simply have no choice but to accept whatever offers they can manage on their properties, pack up and make way for the fences and the gates that follow them, constantly expanding the area under control of King Coal.

The “mining” operations bear the names of the communities that they displace: Twilight, Lindytown, Marsh Fork and others. Once the people are out of the way there is less threat of opposition, less risk of damage that could lead to lawsuits or other troubles, however unlikely. And once the people are gone there is no one to witness the filling of the “hollers”, the blackening of the streams, the absolute removal of mountains – no one to stand in the way or risk liability.

Climate Ground Zero is a name that has been given to a resistance movement of people who may not be displaced, for many of them aren’t from here, but they don’t have as much to lose as the locals and can operate more freely. People have come from local areas, yes, but also from all over the country in response to the pleas for assistance from some of the locals who have chosen to stay and fight for what is right, what is theirs, and what should be inviolate. Some have just come because they see the injustice and they feel they must do something. And so they come.

And it’s a good thing they have. Those who grow up in this area know that laws that apply in the rest of the country don’t apply here. Justice in the Appalachian sense implies that the company will get what it wants, and that those who resist will be made to suffer, and that eventually fighting will only hurt them and those they love. And when the economies that once supported thriving communities that bore the names of the operations I mentioned above have dried up because of lack of work, poor wages, ill health, and the stress of living with constant explosions and continual heavy machinery traffic, then there really is no reason to stick around.

I wish I could convey how very real this difference is between these beautiful mountains and the rest of the country, but honestly, you need to see it for yourself.

This helps: Check out the reality of MTR with this handy layer in Google Earth.

But there is every reason for those of us with the means and the passion for justice to come from without to help those who remain, and to stand up for the mountains and the voiceless life they support.

Under the direction, however casual but always effective, of RAN co-founder Mike Roselle, a staging area has been created that has seen a series of actions executed against the tyranny of King Coal’s reign. Non-Violent Direct Action has driven tyrants out all over the world; bringing peace and self-determination, gaining women the right to vote, saving species from commercial hunting, and so on. We have great leaders upon whose shoulders we stand; Ghandi, Martin Luther King, Jr., Mother Theresa and others.

James McGuinness and Mike Roselle of Climate Ground Zero were arrested on February 25, 2009, at Performance Coal's Edwight Mountaintop Removal site in southern West Virginia. The protesters chose to focus on the active mountaintop removal site above Marsh Fork Elementary School in Sundial, WV on the eve of the 37th year anniversary of the Buffalo Creek Disaster. photograph by Antrim Caskey

And it will save these mountains and these communities. An action in Wise County on September 7th drew attention to the construction of an unnecessary coal-fired power plant with 11 arrests and led to the revocation of that building permit. A subsequent action that stopped work at the Twilight Mine saw 14 activists arrested and made national headlines. Following that a rally – unheard of in this area and bolstered by the participation of celebrities and scientists and saw dozens arrested and gained national attention for an elementary school that lies directly under a massive removal operation.

And most recently a couple of tree-sitters kept a mountain safe from Massey Energy for six days, increasing awareness of this issue. They endured significant abuse by mining company employees – sleep deprivation, threatened with chainsaws, verbally abused, etc. And when they came down, finally, for fear for their safety, they were arrested and held on $25,000 bail – a ludicrous amount for a non-federal charge that amounted to trespassing and littering. Here where the media is 95% controlled by King Coal, as is 98% of the law this is what one begins to expect – though I’ll never get used to it. Fortunately those figures were adjusted down to a rational $1000 each – a small blessing in a sea of darkness.

The treatment of the activists by Massey was so abusive that two security guards walked off the job, unwilling to be a party to such inhuman, criminal behavior. Check out this video of the guards talking about their experience.

And when the actions are over, the activists gather again to share knowledge gained and plan for the next peaceful salvo that will help grow this resistance until finally the mountains are safe, the communities can get back to living again, and King Coal fades into a past that should have been history long ago.

We are witnessing the death of a dinosaur and the birth of a new era, and it’s happening at Climate Ground Zero. Be a part of it – and do so with your support of the folks at CGZ and with your support of RAN. Strength in numbers, creativity and courage.

Activists shut down a dragline at the Twilight Mine, Boone County, West Virginia

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.

There is a notable absence of commerce – (very) few restaurants, few small stores, a couple of nondescript chain groceries…and more tanning services than one could ever hope for. We counted 7 between Rock Creek and the highway to Charleston – but little else other than gas stations and random, small general stores.

And as you pass through it King Coal’s presence dominates. There are several mines you pass by – and these are just the ones by the road. They all have an ominous, dedicated “ambulance entrance”, and they all seem to find ways of passing coal across the road on various conveyors. Trucks, trucks and more trucks. Near Marsh Fork there is a coal processing area (more on that later) that was (mercifully) forced to erect a large dome over it to reduce the amount of coal dust raining down on the local community.  But those kinds of respites are rare in a country that sees more explosives blasted in one week than were dropped in total on Hiroshima on that terrible day. Here it happens all week long. And those who oppose it face strong, increasingly aggressive opposition from Coal and its employees.

A recent protest saw many community members come out for the first time, thanks in part to the presence of celebrity activist, Darryl Hannah and NASA’s Dr. James Hansen. According to some their willingness to forfeit the freedom to help raise the awareness of this tragic issue meant much to many locals, many of whom felt safe for the first time thanks to them and the others who joined in.

Today two tree-sitters, (see this earlier story) were finally removed by authorities supported by Massey Energy employees and contracted security. Aparently even Big Don Blankenship even made a dramatic appearance in his personal helicopter, swooping low over activists supporting the sitters, uncovering their hiding place and drawing unwanted attention.

For the last two days the miners had taken to making so much noise with their air horns and with drums and with chainsaws – finally threatening to cut the trees down under the sitters, starting the saw up and grinding it against the trees in an effort to unnerve the activists, that the folks decided they had to come down for their safety.

Nick Stocks, 25, and Laura Steepleton, 24 finally came down after constantly being kept from sleep and after suffering often explicitly rude verbal and physically  threatening abuse.

An unexpected ray of sunshine, one security guard is rumoured to have walked off the job in disgust at the way the tree-sitters were being treated.

According to folks at Climate Ground Zero (http://www.climategroundzero.org) they are both being held on an outrageous $25,000 bail – each – for charges such as obstructing an officer of the law and littering. Seems more than a little excessive – seems to support the notion that the laws that govern the rest of the company are somehow interpreted and used differently here.

The playing field here is not level. The law does not function as one expects it to as guaranteed by the constitution and the Bill of Rights. $25,000 bail each for obstructing destruction-as-usual – was there a felony committed here? No. But there seems to be enough influence in favor of King Coal that punitive measures such as these are possible, as unlikely as that may seem.
Apparently, this whole area is in Massey Energy’s deep pockets, and they mean to have it all. They keep up a constant battle to keep locals scared to speak out and go to great lengths to intimidate those that do. When you see the towns with failed businesses you wonder, if coal is so important to the wellbeing of these communities, where is the prosperity? I see only stolen dreams and a polluted river (apparently just downstream locals are told not to consume more than 6 ounces of fish per month if they choose to eat what they catch.)

Now Massey is taking it another step up, sponsoring the mega event, “Friends of America” rally – sponsored mostly by the “Friends of Coal”. They are giving away thousands – tens of thousands – of free tickets to a Labor Day out that includes performances by Ted Nugent and Hank Williams, Jr., and an appearance by none other than Sean Hannity.

No doubt the tickets are free but there will be plenty of vendors charging whatever they can to feed the throngs expected to take Massey CEO, Don Blankenship’s FREE TICKETS offer. I won’t be there.

But tonight I was fortunate enough to spend some time with the activists who are fighting to save these beautiful mountains, to save their communities and their homes, to protect the forests and ultimately something that in truth belongs to all of us, and yet should belong to no one.  Who speaks for them? People like Nick and Laura, and the many others at Climate Ground Zero (http://climategroundzero.org), Coal River Mountain Watch (http://www.crmw.net ), Appalachian Voices (http://www.appvoices.org), Keepers of the Mountains (http://mountainkeeper.org), Ohio Valley Educational Cooperative (http://ovec.org), Southwings Aviation (http://www.southwings.org) the Sierra Club (http://sierraclub.org), RAN (http://www.ran.org) and many others, who are helping establish a powerful force for resistance and change.

The folks here on the ground in West Virginia need our support and we owe it to them to give them every chance for success. These mountains are unbearably beautiful, and their loss is a tragedy too terrible to allow.

How many mountains must we lose before Obama’s EPA says enough is enough? (Take Action)

How many miles of streams must be buried forever under millions of tons of rock and mining debris before JP Morgan Chase takes a stand and stops funding these operations for their own profit, and our loss? (Take Action)

If we don’t help these brave people and these beleaguered communities, who will? Massey and King Coal have a lot of resources. We must ensure that these folks get the support they need. Together we are powerful, and if ever there was a need for us to join together around a common goal, a common threat, a common future, now is the time.

Stay tuned for more as tomorrow we see this issue from the sky, and spend some time with some of the local activists who have made this campaign their life’s focus.

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.

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.

Don’t get me wrong, I have great respect for, and am deeply indebted to the miners working in coalmines and on MTR projects who risk their lives daily to bring power to our country. I understand they feel threatened by anything that might take away their jobs. And, I don’t want to see them lose more jobs, as 75% of mining jobs have already been lost to the machines and explosives of MTR.

While it takes fewer miners to remove coal with Mountain Top Removal there are just as many dangers, accidents and fatalities! It is a cheaper way for the companies to mine and that’s why it’s becoming so pervasive.

Yesterday, I received this email from a woman in Virginia -

Dear Daryl,
Thank you so much for coming to West Virginia and trying to save our mountains from Mountain top removal. I am a 9th generation Appalachian and it pains us to see what is happening. If it was not for the Internet I wouldn’t have known about your efforts. Massey has quite a bit of influence of the local media in the coalfields. I am sorry you were arrested but I thank you for standing up for what is right.  We need to work on sustainable communities here in the mountains so that coal miners will have opportunities for jobs not so dangerous. My brother works, when he can’t find anything else, at the mines driving the large dump trucks that haul the coal out of the pits. It’s dangerous work even if you are not underground. You just wouldn’t believe the equipment they give them to work with. This one site he was in this massive huge dump truck that the floorboard was rusted out with open holes. Rocks would fly back into the cab from the tires. And when it rains, it’s a mudslide. One of his co -workers was killed when the dump truck went over an embankment last year. Reporting gets you fired. And yet these workers will defend the job because there is nothing else. So thank you for standing up with us. We do appreciate it.

Then there’s the sickness…

According to WVU’s institute for health policy research, coal county residents are more likely to suffer from chronic heart, lung and kidney diseases, cancers and generally suffer from excess numbers of premature death. There’s a high cancer risk for up to 1 out of every 50 Americans living near the more than 100 billion gallons of toxic sludge in the clay-lined and unlined  (the majority unlined) coal ash landfills and slurry ponds, such as the TVA Kingston ash sludge landfill that collapsed into the Emory River in December.

Tennessee Valley Authority officials consistently have said the ash spilled in December from the utility’s Kingston Fossil Plant wet landfill in Harriman, Tenn., and in January from its Widows Creek pond in Stevenson, Ala., is non-hazardous…  but after the spill, regulatory and independent testing have found high levels of toxicity in the spilled waste and raw water where the two spills occurred. 31 of the landfills and slurry ponds in Tennessee, Georgia and Alabama are on or near major waterways!

The slurry pond above the Marsh fork elementary school where we held our protest holds 2.8 billion gallons (it’s one of the smallest ponds – one nearby in brushing fork holds 9 billion gallons) of sludge in unlined pits containing arsenic, lead, cadmium, and mercury.

Marsh Fork Elementary School site and toxic holding pond

Tragically but predictably in coal river valley, the children are often sick with headaches and asthma and of the 200 students and teachers at Marsh fork elementary school cancer rates are higher than average.

Three teachers have died from cancer and one is struggling with disease now.

In 2005 one student died from ovarian cancer at age seventeen and another was still battling ovarian cancer.

Today I received this from a man in Raleigh County, West Virginia –

West Virginia. It is hell.
Every morning a 6 am my cat starts coughing. My eyes burn, my nose burns (sometimes bleeds), I get ill, and my health continues to fall apart. I got two forms of cancer, I can’t drink the water.. and we are 15 miles from Marsha Fork where they are making (was supposed to be shut down) a cyanide based pesticide that in an accident killed 1800 people in India. My kid is lead poisoned, my wife is- and in a mile radius 10 people have had heart attacks or died from whatever is here. The dust is full of arsenic and the Massey power plants create a blue haze which is really sulfuric acid. EPA won’t come near this place. It is owned by the coal industry. Thousands, who live here and are dying from 100 miles of rivers under coal sludge, Do the earth a favor and check on this and if you feel like improving our life send us a ticket out of here. I am sending you a picture of my son. He is being poisoned here. It breaks my heart. We cannot even get workman’s comp and have huge families. We are the poor of southern West Virginia..

State regulators are telling the people that it’s an “improvement” to flatten a forested mountain, seed it with grass and hope that some shrubs will grow – and then allow hunters who have signed “the appropriate waivers of liability, indemnifications and assumptions of risks” to hunt whatever animals might choose to inhabit such barren fields.

As humorist Dave Barry says, we’re not making this up, although we wish we were.

Let me make one thing clear…  there is no such thing as clean coal!!!

I wish President Obama would stop using the term and take CEQ chief Nancy Sutley and EPA head Lisa Jackson to visit these unfortunate mining sites under their jurisdiction.

When we flip the switch to turn our lights on, most of us have no idea where that power comes from. According to the U.S. dept. of energy, more than 50% of our electricity comes from coal.

Coal emits much more carbon (CO2) per unit of energy than oil and natural gas. From the acid drainage of mines polluting rivers and streams, to the release of mercury and other toxins when its burned into the atmosphere, the fine particulates that wreak havoc on human health, and the colossal waste, coal pollutes every step of the way.

“Clean coal” is the industry’s attempt to “clean up” its dirty image – the industry’s green wash buzzword. It is not a new type of coal. “Clean coal” methods only move pollutants from one waste stream to another.  Coal is a dirty business!

The good news is we have a solution! A study of the long-term benefits of INFINITE Wind Power versus FINITE coal MTR in Coal River Mountain, West Virginia already exists. They show “excellent potential” for efficiency, productivity and economic benefit. Though it doesn’t have short-term financial returns, wind promises to provide clean, inexpensive energy and offer scores of safe jobs for the long term. Just check out the staggering figures from a report released by the American Wind Energy Association “wind industry jobs jumped to 85,000 in 2008, a 70% increase from the previous year”. Renewable energy will continue to grow exponentially where as mining jobs have decreased or remained relatively stagnant at “81,000 workers” for the over 20 years, according to the 2007 U.S. dept of energy report.

I can understand why those who live in coal towns are frustrated, because while we have this technology available to us NOW – it is still just “a promise” in these regions.

Being led away by the police

It’s imperative we let our president, our elected public servants and entrepreneurs know that this is where we want our investment to be directed.

Hopefully some wise, forward thinking heroes will step up the plate, build the wind farm and take this incredible win, win, wind, opportunity to bury the dirty dinosaur of Mountain Top Removal forever.

Daryl Hannah
http://www.crmw.net/
http://www.appvoices.org/
http://ilovemountains.org/
http://www.ram.org/obamamtr

You can follow Daryl on Twitter: http://twitter.com/dhlovelife

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.

Since 1997, when Gunnoe served as a volunteer on underground mine fires and air quality issues, the West Virginia and Cherokee native has been one of the most vocal advocates for justice in the Appalachian coalfields. Refusing to back down to numerous threats from King Coal thugs or leave her ancestral land, she has emerged as an inspiring heroine in the coalfields for the rest of the nation. In 2000, her house and orchards along the hills of her grandfather’s homeplace became the frontlines for a mountaintop removal operation that would eventually lead to wide scale erosion, flooding and water contamination.

Gunnoe’s home has been flooded seven times in the last eight years.

She writes: “The mountains are slipping into the hollow and in turn, it’s washing by me, and [it's] flooding the people across from me. Everyone downstream from where that mountaintop removal site is gets flooded and their wells are contaminated. My well is contaminated. Can’t drink my water. I buy on average about $250 worth of water a month, and that’s on a slow month.”

Since President Jimmy Carter signed the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1977, which shamefully recognized mountaintop removal as an approved mining technique, over 500 mountains have been clear cut and blown to bits in Appalachia, and an estimated 1,200 miles of streams have been jammed with mining waste.

A frequent speaker around the nation, and a mother of two teens, Gunnoe has also pointed to the issue of human rights violations from mountaintop removal.

In the essay collection, Like Walking onto Another Planet, she wrote: “People around here are swiggin’ down contaminated water all day long, every day. The health affects are sometimes long-term. It’s usually pancreatic cancer or some kind of liver disease, or kidney stones, gall stones – digestive tract problems. And then, too, people’s breathing. The blasting is killin’ people – just smotherin’ them to death through breathin’ all of the dust. The computers and electronics and stuff in my house stay completely packed up with black coal dirt and rock dust together. Why do they expect us to just take this? It’s not gonna happen down at the state capital. I mean they’re not gonna go up there and blast off the top of a mountain in the background of the Capitol.”

Here’s a clip of Gunnoe describing the flooding at her home in Bob White, West Virginia

For more information on Gunnoe and the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, see:
www.ohvec.org

And have a look at the official Goldman site – there’s a great description of Maria, the issue and a video that really tells her story and her relationship to MTR in her community.

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.

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

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 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