Grist has been posting many excellent links, discussions, and interviews about Mountaintop Coal Removal in the Appalachians. It's been a while since we added to our MTR posts (one, two, three, four), so allow me to do so now.
First is an article in Blue Ridge Country by Peter Slavin.
Slavin reports on the anti-MTR movement over the past year, with successes in Tennessee, large protests in West Virginia, with sit-ins, congressional action, and with new popular press articles ("Features have appeared in 2006 in Orion (January), National Geographic (March), Vanity Fair (May) and O (Oprah) (July)"), with documentary films, and even a cartoon. The Oprah article, referenced here, is by Jeff Goodall, author of Big Coal.
Second, note that the 2nd Annual MTR Week in Washington will be held May 12-16th, 2007.
Third, there are the reports about using coal-fired facilities to produce ethanol (recent, and last year). Quoting the Twin Cities Pioneer Press, David Roberts writes:
Minnesota's first coal-fired ethanol plant soon will begin operation in Heron Lake, and it won't be the last. The high price of natural gas is enticing new plant owners to embrace coal power. But while it may make economic sense, the choice of this fossil fuel to make a renewable one has some people shaking their heads.
(Also look here for more by Amanda Griscom Little on the problems with Ethanol. And here, for our recent post on the biofuel issue.)
And, fourth, there's a good interview with Mary Ann Hitt, director of Appalachian Voices, resident of Blacksburg, VA, and motivator for the new I Love Mountains website for on-line organizing against MTR.
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You know, as long as they are going to take off the tops of those mountains, instead of putting the debris into the valleys, maybe they should load it onto barges, ship it down the Ohio and Mississippi, and dump in on New Orleans. Maybe they could then get N.O. way above sea level that way.
So long as they slowly drip the toxic acids and chemicals used to dynamite the mountains apart as they barge down to N.O. -- that way they don't over-contaminate just one part. Spread the poison; dilution is the solution?
thanks it is the very important topic.