"Improving God's Creation" [A mountain ecology Interlude]

Dave and I have been talking about Mountain Top Coal Removal, in two parts so far (one, two) of an on-going discussion, and I had yet to mention this article from early July, in The Roanoke Times. (That's southwestern Virginia.)
Since Dave just got back from the Canadian Rockies, I wanted to get back on topic. But it's Friday and I don't wanna type. So, here are some great pictures from that Roanoke Times piece instead of long, rambling discourse on mountains and energy and ecology and culture. Gene Dalton is the photographer.

Incidentally, Dink Shackleford, the guy below in the wheelchair and the executive director of the Virginia Mining Association, is the one who claimed "We have a chance to improve on God's creation."

This is in the category of the reasoning of Patrick Michaels, famed anti-global warming guy and, embarrassingly, fellow UVA professor (he's the Dembski of Global Warming, I take it?) who thinks that more CO2 will help the environment. Or, or, that Bush guy, William Myers, who was up for circuit court nomination, and who had argued that EPA restrictions should be relaxed in the South Pacific, because after the military uses islands to practice exploding bombs, in the process eradicating native bird populations and destroying ecological systems, birders and nature enthusiasts would be happy since it's more interesting for them to look for rare birds than common ones.

Now, back on task, here are some Appalachian photographs. [The captions below are all blockquotes from the picture gallery found at the article link above.]

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Ed Wiley is a former miner whose granddaughter goes to school at Marsh Fork Elementary, in Sundial, W.Va. A surface mine, a processing plant and a pond that holds more than 2 billion gallons of coal sludge sit behind the school. Wiley stage a hunger strike on the West Virginia capitol steps to get an audience with the governor

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This mine began with a permit that covered about 106 acres. Now it stretches over more than 2,000 acres. This is the mine where a boulder rolled off a haul road, crashed through a house and killed a 3-year-old boy.

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Dink Shackleford, executive director of the Virginia Mining Association, thinks the flat land surface mining creates is a good thing. That land can accommodate development such as the shopping center where he's sitting.

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Proponents of mountaintop removal mining say it provides flat land for development in mountainous areas. This shopping center was built on a former mine site near Logan, W.Va. Mining continues just past the edge of the parking lot. In Virginia, less than 2 percent of reclaimed surface mining land is used to development.

More like this

Hey Ben: Do you have the lat/long for these locales. Would be interesting to see what GoogleEarth has to show.

Thats right. We can and have improved upon Gods creation. We have homes with heat, indoor plumbing, TV's and on and on. If these people really are true to their words they need to turn off the electricity cause it is made with coal. Stop the demand and the coal industry will go away.

Or we can send mining coal over seas where there are no regs. Like they have all the manufacturing in the USA. Thanks enviro wackos. You will soon meet your goals of killing this country off.

By Dink Shackleford (not verified) on 19 Dec 2006 #permalink

Perhaps some of us just look a bit further ahead. Perhaps we see a time when flat lands covered with Wal-marts will no longer be seen as an answer to every question.

Creating decent jobs, creating a decent quality of life for hard-working folks, that's a goal I believe we share. It turns out that healthy eco-systems contribute a lot toward our planet's ability to keep us alive and healthy. So, at some point we might want to preserve enough patches of healthy eco-system to sustain that decent quality of life for hard-working folks, for their children, and for their grandchildren.

Cheers

I like the demeanor Sustainability Southeast takes, helping show that we have common cause here, that we're concerned about the same issues. But I don't agree with you, Dink, when you propose a stark either/or -- use electricity produced by coal or go without power. The situation is not so simple and, fortunately, many good people are working on configuring ways to avoid the dual pitfalls of job loss with mountaintop removal and environmental health loss with the industry as a whole.