Mountain Top Removal in Appalachia-The Last Mountain

An excellent film I've been keeping tabs on for a while now about Mountain Top Removal in Virginia mainly.

If you don't know anything about this incredibly destructive practice, here's an intro:




thelastmountainmovie.com...

It is indeed an extremely destructive practice however it is not the only extremely destructive part of burning coal for electricity. One of the worst parts of it is that coal rarely actually pays for the damage it does:

Each stage in the life cycle of coal—extraction, transport, processing, and combustion—generates a waste stream and carries multiple hazards for health and the environment. These costs are external to the coal industry and are thus often considered “externalities.” We estimate that the life cycle effects of coal and the waste stream generated are costing the U.S. public a third to over one-half of a trillion dollars annually. Many of these so-called externalities are, moreover, cumulative. Accounting for the damages conservatively doubles to triples the price of electricity from coal per kWh generated, making wind, solar, and other forms of nonfossil fuel power generation, along with investments in efficiency and electricity conservation methods, economically competitive.

Full cost accounting for the life cycle of coal

How does this occur?

Mine collapses, or mine subsidence has a potential for major effects aboveground, which are especially devastating in built-up areas. German underground coal-mining, especially in North Rhine-Westphalia, has damaged thousands of houses, for example.

The mining and burning of coal leads to slag heaps and substantial fly ash sludge storage ponds. Thousands of these all over the world will remain a potential hazard essentially forever, and several failures of the containment of these have had a devastating impact on both the surroundings and water resources nearby.

Nor are the negative effects of coal limited to the environment. Every year, coal miners die from diseases brought on by breathing hazardous coal dust. Black lung disease, also known as coal workers’ lung pneumonoconiosis, is caused by breathing in coal mine dust. If inhaled over an extended period of time, this dust can collect in the lungs and create scar tissue that obstructs airflow to the lungs. Despite laws, miners continue to die from this disease. As well, as coal production increases in an area, so does the incidence of chronic illness in nearby communities among segments of the population not directly involved with the industry.

(and there's more in the link)
Government intervention on fossil fuel pollution

Death and Disease from Power Plants

In 2000 and again in 2004, Abt Associates issued a study commissioned by the Clean Air Task Force quantifying the deaths and other health affects attributable to the fine particle pollution from power plants. In this newly updated study, CATF examines the progress towards cleaning up one of the nation's leading sources of pollution. The report finds that over 13,000 deaths each year are attributable to fine particle pollution from U.S. power plants. This is almost half the impact that our 2004 study found and is reflective of the impact that state and federal actions have had in reducing power plant emissions by roughly half. However, much more still needs to be done.

The interactive map below allows you to learn of the risk in your state or county simply by clicking on the Google Map below. You can click on your state, zoom into your county, or click on a power plant to view a variety of health impacts and other data. A new tool also available is a downloadable Google Earth file, which once downloaded and launched in Google Earth, will allow you to explore a whole host of data and health impacts around the country.

www.catf.us...

I did a thread on all that here if you're interested.

People in W.Va have got to be so freakin' greedy and stupid as to remove entire mountains.

What a bunch of half-wits. They deserve whatever they get out of this destructive practice. When the coal runs out, there will be no more mountains.

Fools, the lot of them.

reply to post by The Sword


It's not the people of West Virginia that started or even wanted mountain top removal practices, certainly not the miners as this process lead to many of them being unemployed. It's bad enough when the only jobs available are going down and working in a mine but now they've taken that away.
This is more of the Bush environmental legacy.
It was the owners and investors that started mountain top removal, not the locals that live near them. They're the ones that suffer from the practice in unemployment and pollution.

Comforting to know I live in a high risk area.
It certainly explains the huge number of people I know with breathing problems.

These mining companies are as arrogant as they are ignorant if they believe that return the mountains to their original condition after they extract the coal. They might even try to tell you that they have improved the land by making it somehow more exploitable. Improvements like leveling it for development or planting some fast growing GM trees for the lumber industry. It sickens me how greedy corporations never stop exploiting the earth.

Originally posted by The Sword
People in W.Va have got to be so freakin' greedy and stupid as to remove entire mountains.

What a bunch of half-wits. They deserve whatever they get out of this destructive practice. When the coal runs out, there will be no more mountains.

Fools, the lot of them.

Yeah, as one other person already noted, your (likely classist) disdain for the people is misguided. Many of the people PROTESTING Mountain Top Removal (MTR) are from those small town being destroyed by 'big coal'.

This is how most of the US gets it's power, btw. What's powering YOUR computer?