Your Connection to Environmental Destruction: Coal Does More Than Keep the Lights On

The Washington Post ran an excellent story on Mountaintop Removal (MTR) in West Virginia on the front page of this week's Sunday paper. The story is notable for several reasons.

One reason is that front page placement: not only does it provide visibility to the issue, but it also adds a degree of legitimacy to it as a topic of public debate.

On my read, though, the story was even sharper for the focus it offered on connections. Just as with the last MTR post we ran (in February, here, which was in part spurred by this one) the author made consumer practices the central thread of the short article. It's called "Stripping Mountains to Power D.C." after all. And it's acommpanied by a stunning photo series -- a photo essay, better put. David Fahrenthold writes that "Washington's air conditioners and iPods have helped drive the region's 'mountaintop' mining." He also writes:

The links that bind the cathedral-ceiling suburbs of Washington to the blasted-out mines of West Virginia can be traced through federal energy records. The Washington Post analyzed almost four years of data, showing where the six coal-fired power plants across the D.C. region bought their supply.

The records make one thing clear: The plants have been buying a lot more coal. Total purchases were more than 40 percent higher in 2006 than in 2004. The increase came as the Washington region's demand for electricity grew 18 percent since 2001, driven by population growth and an increasingly wired culture. D.C. area plants do not send their electricity straight to local homes but feed it into the multi-state regional power grid.

This is an ecological point, but it's a technological-ecological one. Our technological systems are so expansive and we, as consumers, are so integrated into them, that discussing coal companies obliterating mountains in Appalachia is the same conversation as discussing turning your cell phone off at night. Fahrenthold did a great job articulating that those two things are not separate issues.

It's made even more salient when one considers that sensible "green" energy choices now involve turning off a cell phone at night, if not two, and not about how we have two cell phones that need to be charged all the live long day. It's about powering down the laptop in one room while using the computer in the other, not about the increases in energy demands in our homes and with our lifestyles.

The story comes at the same time a controversy is brewing in Virginia about Dominion Power's Governor-supported plans (it's Tim Kaine a Democrat) to build a huge new coal-fired facility in Wise, in the southern part of the state. The Southern Environmental Law Center notes that, "Among other problems, the power plant would add to harmful air pollution in the region, increase greenhouse gas emission that cause global warming, and accelerate mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia."

Sure, everything is connected, no news there. But the ecological systems within which we are connected include these material and cultural and political elements too. Consumption demands lie at the center of environmental patterns.