Most environmentally aware people try to keep up with the science, the debates, and the drafting of policy that will hopefully address Global Climate Change (a.k.a. Global Warming). The hope is that we can diminish human contributions to greenhouse gases before the planet becomes unlivable. Things like developing energy sources that don’t require raping the earth or poisoning the air and water (Mountaintop Removal) or never-ending oil wars, conservation at home and at work, switching urban transportation fleets to biodiesel, purchasing hybrid cars, commitments to rebuilding infrastructure such as the electrical grid so it doesn’t ‘lose’ nearly half of our generation capacity, ending the decimation of tropical rainforests, etc.

And many of the people young and old who are paying attention and doing what they can to mitigate their own carbon footprints are also well aware that with some tweaking of our antiquated agricultural policies that were originally designed to ‘beat’ the Soviets in some kind of mock Cold War game of who can produce the most corn, we could be saving 20% of our fossil fuel consumption simply by switching the nation’s primary shipping systems – trains, ships and semi fleets – to biodiesel made with alternative feedstock crops. Along with our agricultural machinery. A combine can run just fine on biodiesel – or, with a pre-heater refit, straight vegetable oil.

Yet there’s a huge contributor to climate change that people don’t seem to be particularly aware of or take seriously as far as choices they could make to lessen their own impact. It’s not about carbon dioxide, which is the primary focus of most attempts to mitigate Global Warming, but about other greenhouse gases like nitrous oxide and methane. For these the agricultural sector is again the most significant contributor, and it all revolves around our hard-to-kick habit of eating way too much meat.

Meat production accounts for a majority of the deforestation both in the tropics and temperate regions. Researchers from Johns Hopkins published a paper in the journal Public Health Nutrition last year examining the shortcomings of media reporting about agricultural (thus food choices) contributions to climate change which illustrates why this aspect of the issue is escaping so many otherwise concerned citizens.

According to the United Nations meat production accounts for 9% of human CO2 production. Yet meat production accounts for 65% of humanity’s contribution of nitrous oxide, which has nearly 300 times the greenhouse impact of carbon dioxide! Meat production further produces 37% of the methane contribution (a gas 23 tomes more greenhouse potent than CO2) and 64% of ammonia – a potent contributor to acid rain. Land use dedicated to livestock production includes 30% of the planet’s entire land surface and 33% of global arable land just for growing food for those cattle, swine, chickens and such. Together, livestock production accounts for a fifth of all global emissions. Which is higher than all transportation sources combined.

Truth is that feed enough to produce a single pound of steak could provide adequate nutrition for 5 humans. Not to mention livestock production’s contributions to water shortages and pollution loads, epidemic obesity in the population that for some reason believes it needs meat 4 or 5 times a day, thus serious contributions to the notably lousy health of our population across the board – and cost of health care for so many obese, sickly meat-eaters.

Beef and lamb are the most inefficient and most polluting meats, pork is a bit more GHG efficient (but not less polluting per water quality and usage), chicken is lowest. By simply not eating meat during one meal a day, we could cut our GHG emissions overall by more than 10%. Individuals could still maintain their weight problems, hardened arteries and high cholesterol levels just fine despite skipping the bacon or strip steak once a day. If they chose to eat meat only once a day, they might lose some weight and find themselves in better overall health while lessening their personal contribution to global climate change by half!

Chances are that the world’s governments aren’t going to do enough in the next decade or two to delay or prevent massive global climate change and all the deadly consequences of that to humans and the rest of the life we share this planet with. Chances are that individual people’s diet and lifestyle choices will kill them sooner than they might have liked no matter what governments do or don’t do in the future. For those of us who have made serious lifestyle choices to become more responsible and more aware by doing as much as we can for ourselves, we’ve a big investment is staying healthy and active, in wholesome food production and preservation, and in educating our children, friends and neighbors toward healthier lifestyles and smaller footprints on the face of the earth.

Everyone dies in the end, all generations. The questions today are how much of the world will we take with us when we go, and how much will we leave to future generations so they have a chance to experience life too. We faced a similar dilemma with our vast arsenals of WMDs a generation ago, and while it still plays a role in international tensions, we no longer live our lives under Damocles’ Sword threatening to make us extinct 400+ times over just because we can. A decision was made in the ether of humanity’s collective consciousness to have a future, to allow life to continue its evolutionary journey on this rock. We could make such a decision again, without too much sacrifice and both we and future generations would be much healthier and happier for it.

Pick a day and go meatless. Pick a meal and skip the meat in it every day. Switch to chicken and stop eating beef or pork or lamb apart from holidays once or twice a year. If enough of us did just that much we might buy the future some time, and time is a precious – but diminishing – commodity right now.

Here are some links to sources readers may find helpful in educating themselves about this aspect of global climate change, and possibly for help in making the right choices…

WaPo: The Meat of the Problem

AAAS: Climate-Friendly Dining … Meats

IA State: Food, Fuel and Freeways

Why is the Media Afraid to Tackle Livestock’s Role in Climate Change?

Cornell: Food for Livestock or People

Most committed modern homesteaders try to keep up with the many issues of concern to us personally, our country, and our chosen way of life. Things like rural development policies, governmental agricultural and energy policies, self-sufficiency (and roadblocks to that), management of forests and water sources, etc. It’s because we care that we are who we are and do what we do. And a good many of us try to keep up daily or weekly with the best sources of information we need to keep abreast of those issues.

One of my favorite sources is the Organic Consumers Association [OCA], which is tireless in its efforts to follow and disseminate necessary news and useful resources for homesteaders like us. If you haven’t signed up yet for their newsletters, go on over to OCA and do so. You sure won’t be sorry!

In my newsletter this week I was again informed that OCA’s website has been under sustained hacker attack, operatives for the ‘usual suspect’ [Monsanto] notwithstanding. Somebody out there doesn’t want us to have the good information OCA delivers to us for free, and is actively attempting to thwart the effort. Show ‘em some love if you’ve got some love (or money) to spare!

One of the issues OCA is on top of that should be of serious concern to all of us who grow organic fruits and veggies or raise free-range chickens, grass-fed beef or offer organic dairy products is the Obama administration’s alliance with Monsanto in matters of developing policy. The new proposals for “food safety” have proven positively draconian for small value-added producers, many of whom are having their farms raided by gestapo-type goon squads and their equipment, animals and food products seized, and are facing astronomical legal bills all in the name of corporate agribiz profits and total control of the food supply. I mean, it’s not like these people care about toxic substances, unsustainable practices, mad cows or melamine in baby formula or anything. What they want to eliminate are your choices, access to markets, and ability to make a living by sustainably tending and preserving the land instead of raping it wholesale.

Knowledge can be our most effective weapon beside our commitments to the land, our families, our way of life and our hard work to make it work. If readers have more sources for keeping up, please offer them in the comments and I’ll check them out and report back.

Hope renewed across the Appalachian coalfields – Obama Administration suspends mountaintop removal permits for further review…

Obama’s new EPA administrator Lisa Jackson announced this past Tuesday that the agency would be delaying somewhere between 150 and 250 permits issued by the US Army Corps of Engineers to coal companies to flatten mountains and destroy watersheds in their desperate quest to extract the last of the sequestered coal with as few paid miners as possible.

What the EPA will be reviewing are blatant violations of clean water regulations former President G.W. Bush waived in his 2002 “fill rule” and a last days repeal of the stream buffer zone rule that would allow coal companies to ignore any and all impacts of the water supplies of rural residents, towns and cities dependent upon these mountain streams for drinking water supplies.

The map above (h/t Appalachian Voices) shows graphically how open strip mines and MTR directly affects the very poorest regions of Appalachia. One might suspect that these areas are happy to have the good jobs these operations offer, but the reality is that this kind of mining is equipment-reliant, done with machines and not men. For instance, King Coal once provided 120,000 decent paying jobs in West Virginia, but now fewer than 20,000 citizens call themselves coal miners. The people whose environment is being raped are getting nothing of value out of the deal. And may indeed be harmed significantly as their water supplies are systematically polluted, sickening their crops, livestock and families.

As reported on this blog in several posts linked below, some of the people in these poor counties have better ideas about what to do with their mountains, things that will improve everyone’s life, make them leaders in clean, renewable energy supplies, and create green jobs for local residents. Especially check out projects like Coal River Wind, which proposes to harvest the wind instead of the mountain itself.

Another great article with good links and pictures is Hope is Alive in Appalachia!!! by Kossack ‘faithfull’. So get off your duff – call some legislators, sign some petitions, and spread some love of mountains in your circle today!

Links:

Old King Coal vs. Reality
Hope is Alive in Appalachia!!!
Old King Coal, a Filthy Old Soul
Coal River Wind
I Love Mountains

West Virginia, Feb. 13: A federal appeals court in Charleston, West Virginia, has ruled that the US Army Corps of Engineers may permit coal companies involved in the controversial and environmentally destructive practice of “Mountaintop Removal” mining to bypass the Clean Water Act rules in its permitting process.

The rules had required environmental impact studies and reviews prior to permitting the coal companies to blast the tops off ancient mountains and using the debris to fill in valleys, a practice that destroys mountain feeder streams, diminishes supply and pollutes the water supplies for towns and cities downstream. An excellent overview of the situation and local efforts to stem the tide of destruction can be found in this diary by Bruce Nilles on the political website Daily Kos.

One of the mountains immediately threatened by this ruling is Coal River Mountain, one of the last mountains still standing in West Virginia’s Coal River Valley. A local coalition, Coal River Wind Farm has developed an excellent alternative to destroying the mountain and watershed that will return economic value to the area, jobs to the residents and power to the grid all at the same time. Do check them out and lend your voice to their efforts to convince WV state officials to choose alternatives to King Coal and the filth he leaves in his wake.

A new campaign is currently in the works between the Waterkeeper Alliance and environmental activist Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. to fight the ongoing destruction of Mountaintop Removal, to be called “The Dirty Lie.” Stay tuned for links and information here as soon as the website’s up and going.

North Carolina, Feb. 14: Meanwhile, efforts by environmentalists in North Carolina have been targeting the mighty behemoth Duke Energy and its CEO James Rogers to protest the building of yet another coal-fired power plant in the mountainous southwestern part of the state.Anti-coal activists in NC have also been holding the line in the state legislature against the purchase and burning of coal from Mountaintop Removal in any of the state’s coal-fired power plants and industries. The proposed restrictions were shelved again in the last session, but supporters are active to get a positive vote this year. Environmentalists in Georgia have introduced similar legislation to ban coal from this source, and in Ohio has suspended the building of new coal plants altogether.

So progress is being made even though Old King Coal is still trying as hard as he ever did to turn the whole world black. So stay tuned, concerned lovers of the land, we’ll be seeing a lot more about these battles in the near future, and all of them will need our support!

Links:

Is America Ready to Quit Coal?
Bill aims to outlaw coal mined by removing mountaintops
Georgia to Ban Mountaintop Removal Coal?
Coal River Wind Farm
Waterkeeper Alliance
Appeals court overrules new mountaintop mine rules

Back in June I posted a disgusted ode to King Coal’s most outrageous method of extracting the combustible black rock from these most beautiful and abundant Appalachians. In that post, Desperate for Fossil Fuels, I described the environmental horror known as “Mountaintop Removal” and offered a bunch of useful links for further information, environmental coalitions and direct actions aimed at stopping this crazy rape of the earth.

Just six months later on December 22, an earthen dam gave way at a coal ash holding pond in Kingston, Tennessee, spilling more than a billion gallons of the sludge into a neighborhood as well as into the Clinch and Tennessee Rivers. Three homes were completely destroyed, many others within the 300 acre sludge zone had to be evacuated, dead fish littered the banks of the rivers and the people of eastern Tennessee as well as the rest of the nation suddenly became familiar with what this waste product of burning coal contains. It’s not pretty.

Concentrated in this nasty toxic waste are poisons and heavy metals such as arsenic and mercury, nickel, vanadium, beryllium, cadmium, barium, chromium, copper, molybdenum, zinc, lead and selenium. There are also concentrations of radioactive elements including uranium, thorium and radium. These substances readily leach from the ash into water, and the rivers and wells around the spill site have tested high in arsenic and other pollutants – residents have been warned to drink only bottled water until they hear otherwise.

Yet despite the fact that there is a toxic load in the millions of pounds of ash produced in America every year from burning coal, the EPA does not regulate it as toxic waste and some states don’t regulate it at all. Thus despite known problems with retention of the sludge, this waste product is actually considered to be a valuable commercial product all by itself!

There are actually marketers of coal fly ash that do nothing but re-sell the stuff for use in concrete and cement, as structural landfill and mine reclamation, as base for roads, for making bricks, and even as “inert filler” in agricultural fertilizer (along with waste from other industries, like steel production). Is it any wonder that our once-fertile plains now need ever-increasing amounts of fertilizer, herbicides, pesticides and genetically engineered crop cultivars in order to grow anything at all?

Those of us who are committed to lovingly managing our land and producing as much of our own sustenance as possible using the most organic of tried-and-true methods can use the sad experience of the people in eastern Tennessee as an opportunity to learn more about what ‘standard practices’ our rural neighbors may be using that could threaten our family’s health and livelihood. Large farms upstream of our homesteads could be using industrial waste-based fertilizers that will leach contaminants into our water sources as easily as their in-season chemical sprays will.

While arsenic in the water is a serious concern for our drinking water, irrigation water and livestock water, heavy metals can wreak terrible havoc as well. Round-Up doesn’t contain heavy metals, your neighbor may think he’s being responsible. So he probably needs to know what’s in that fertilizer too, as he may be wondering why his crops do so poorly and his livestock are so sickly. Do your research, put your findings into an easy-to-read format, and present them at future meetings of your extension classes or community farm planning groups. Pass them out at the farmer’s market and contact environmental groups in your area who are or should become involved in dealing with these issues.

This earth is our only home. Our homesteads – our beloved little corners of earth – are our pleasure, our pride, our freedom and our example to the world. If we won’t protect and defend them, no one else will. So as we move into this hopeful new year with a new administration with a commitment to sustainable energy policies for the future, don’t let anybody fool you about “Clean Coal” – there is no such thing.

We can choose to go with clean, efficient, renewable energy sources. We can choose to diversify our production so that gigantic mega-watt plants aren’t necessary to supply our needs. We can choose to stop raping and pillaging our planet for the short-term gain for the wealthy few, while ignoring basic livability for our children and grandchildren’s future. Get mad, get involved, get busy!

Links:

Desperate for Fossil Fuels
“Mountaintop Removal”
Coal Fly Ash
USGS: Radioactive Elements in Coal and Fly Ash
Fear in the Fields: How Hazardous Wastes Become Fertilizer

As the world economy continues its wide swings mired in uncertainty as well as hope that the necessary changes in the way we energize our world will finally get a real chance for development, scientists at the University of Michigan, funded by the US Department of Energy, have developed a new technology inspired by the way fish swim that can harness the power of slow-moving water.

Most hydropower technologies rely on the action of waves, tides or faster currents caused by dams, and need the water to move as fast as five or six knots in order to operate efficiently. This new system can generate electricity in water that flows less than one knot (about 1 mile per hour), and does not require placing obstructions in or on top of the water as other methods do. Rather, this new system uses cylinders positioned horizontal to the water flow and attached to springs beneath the surface of the waterway. As the water moves past the cylinders, it creates vortices which push and pull them up and down on the springs. It is the mechanical energy in the vibrations that is converted into electricity.

The scientists published their work in the current issue of the quarterly Journal of Offshore Mechanics and Arctic Engineering, and are busily constructing a prototype in the Detroit River – which has a flow of less than two knots. They estimate that this technology would require up to 50 times less ocean acreage as wave power generation systems, and could work in places such as the English Channel, which enjoys quite a strong current, without offering any surface obstructions to shipping lanes or even to picturesque views from the shore.

UM professor of naval architecture Michael Bernitsas calls the system Vivace, or “vortex-induced vibrations for aquatic clean energy.” He explains the inspiration of how fish curve their bodies to glide between the vortices created by the bodies of the fish swimming in front of them. “Their muscle power alone could not propel them through the water at the speed they go, so they ride in each other’s wake,” says Bernitsas.

The really exciting thing is how much power this fairly simple technology could potentially produce. A field of cylinders installed on a sea or river bed and taking up just 1km by 1.5km and about the height of a 2-story house could convert a slow three knot flow into enough electrical power for 100,000 homes. Small systems with just a few cylinders stacked like a ladder could be used to power lighthouses or ships at anchor. Once developed fully, the power would be cheaper than wind, and much cheaper than solar.

Now, this technology isn’t going to make my homestead energy independent any time soon, given that I’ve just two mountain creeks barely deep enough for trout and crawdads, so I’m better off just building a small dam or sluice and installing a turbine just big enough for my needs. I can supplement with solar, both for generating power and for passive uses (water heating, heat gain in the cabin, etc.). But even in my fondest dreams I’m wanting to take Duke Energy up on their backwards meter deal so they have to buy my excess “green” production when I’m not using it all, and I can get electricity from the grid even when my systems go off-line. For the big power companies who trade energy per demand through the grid, this new hydropower technology could make a big dent in our future needs.

So… all we need to figure out once we’ve got all our alternatives in rapid development, is how to fix our antique grid! I’m sort of hoping they’ll opt for a wireless system of some sort, maybe re-discover some of Nicholai Tesla’s very interesting ideas about that. We’re busy getting wireless service for our computers and cell phones, surely it can’t be that hard to figure out an application for electricity. Or is it? Hmmm… guess I’ll have to look into that and report back!

Telegraph: Ocean currents can power the world

There is a resurgence of hope across America in the wake of Tuesday’s election of Democrat Barack Obama as President, promising a new direction of change for the future of our nation. Those of us who have been paying attention to the global financial meltdown, increasingly severe food shortages in the wake of global warming, and the outrageous poisoning of our citizens and livestock/pets by corrupt Chinese producers (a glaring example of globalization’s failures), are hoping that a new dawn in America will bring with it the serious changes to our agricultural policies that have grown increasingly necessary through decades of decline.

Now, politicians don’t generally talk much about agricultural policies while they’re stumping for votes in big cities. And they’re often so ignorant of agricultural issues that even rural dwellers – actual farmers – get nothing but pablum and platitudes in response to their questions. Luckily, journalist Michael Pollan wrote a great ‘open letter’ in the New York Times in October entitled, Farmer in Chief. This is a must-read for all of us committed to self-sufficiency, locally grown foods, the viability of family farms and homesteads, and the future health of an environment we all depend upon for life.

Pollan begins his letter to “Dear Mr. President-Elect” with an honest caution -

It may surprise you to learn that among the issues that will occupy much of your time in the coming years is one you barely mentioned during the campaign: food. Food policy is not something American presidents have had to give much thought to, at least since the Nixon administration — the last time high food prices presented a serious political peril. Since then, federal policies to promote maximum production of the commodity crops (corn, soybeans, wheat and rice) from which most of our supermarket foods are derived have succeeded impressively in keeping prices low and food more or less off the national political agenda. But with a suddenness that has taken us all by surprise, the era of cheap and abundant food appears to be drawing to a close. What this means is that you, like so many other leaders through history, will find yourself confronting the fact — so easy to overlook these past few years — that the health of a nation’s food system is a critical issue of national security. Food is about to demand your attention.

Pollan goes on to explain issues like climate change, energy independence, health care and the general health of the economy in terms of our dependence on food depend crucially on sound agricultural policies. He explains very well what ‘went wrong’ with our food system over the past several decades, and how the antiquated, fossil fuel dependent system cannot be sustained. We no longer have cheap fuels and unlimited water supplies, our policies are haphazard, our subsidies unfair, our planning non-existent. Pollan then offers his particulars in this 9-page article, and the reasoning behind them is fascinating reading. He offers a complete rationale for organic farming many of us have been promoting and practicing for years, in three not at all ‘simple’ steps…

1. Resolarizing the American Farm
2. Reregionalizing the Food System
3. Rebuilding America’s Food Culture

I’ve added my voice to the growing calls for our leadership to pay serious attention to the many complex issues of our food supply – which IS our ‘national security’ – by sending this article as a link in a congratulatory email to President-Elect Obama. This is an immediate action issue, as Obama is right now choosing his cabinet and advisors. Agriculture and food policy issues must not fall to the back of the line. So add your voice to the calls for sane policy and firm leadership today!

You can also sign petitions and keep up to date on incoming news at the Organic Consumers Association. Don’t forget while you’re there to sign up for their email newsletter too!

Many modern homesteaders became modern homesteaders in a “back to the land” movement geared toward greater self-sufficiency in all things the average citified automaton expects government, corporations and society to supply. As government, corporations and society have begun to fall short of those provisions – either during exceptional circumstances or generally failing to provide goods and services cheaply, safely or consistently enough to be counted upon – we left to carve for ourselves a life where we can be primarily responsible for ourselves.

Now, it’s a long-term project. Unless you’re very rich to begin with, getting your homestead up to real self-sufficiency (and fully in your own name) can take decades. Maybe a lifetime or two. We can grow some of our own food, but probably not all. So we develop relationships with farmers and other homesteaders in our regions and learn to trade and barter for consumables. We can slowly but surely develop our own power sources (or learn to do without), but will likely remain tied to the grid or some other out-supply until the technology is developed and affordable enough for us to go off-grid. Etc., etc., etc.

We who keep track of the news – even if just to remind ourselves of why we decided to live so far out in the boonies now that gasoline has become a serious drag on our limited incomes – are increasingly treated to the impressive spectacle of what Global Warming is causing and how it may drastically affect survivability in tropical and temperate regions. The Arctic ice melt is dramatically increasing this summer, the largest ice shelf in the Northern Hemisphere has broken into three pieces, a 7 square mile ice sheet has broken loose in Canada, and Greenland’s glaciers are melting fast. Some predict the entire Arctic will be ice-free within just a year or two.It’s a fact – the temperatures hit 80º in the Arctic during the last week of July. Arguing about the cause of Global Warming (natural or man-made) is a moot point at this juncture. The climate change is in overdrive, irreversible, and we’d all better plan accordingly. No, the government, corporations and society will not take it seriously or plan accordingly. The result will be the very doomsday scenarios we once wanted to escape, one of the reasons we determined to become modern homesteaders. Things will get much worse before they get better, and as we’re discovering just how badly our economy has been wrecked by the idiot greed-meisters in power for the last 8 years, we don’t look to have much conserved wealth to bail ourselves out.

There is serious drought here at my homestead this year. But I’ve lived here for 16 years, and have seen the weather change quite a bit. Sometimes there is drought in my microclime, sometimes I get an inch of rain a day all spring and summer long. Some winters it snows a foot a week at least, some winters it never snows at all. Some autumns put on a spectacular leaf show, sometimes they hang on until mid-November before simply turning brown and falling off. Fact is that these mountains have long been known to “create weather,” and weather tends to occur in cycles.

Thus I’ve no idea how a rapidly changing global climate will finally leave my homestead. A desert or a rain forest? Too hot to live or too cold to be productive? Luckily, the very fact that my climate changes on a fairly regular annual basis (with four distinct seasons every year) allows me to consider a lot of possible scenarios I can plan for and hope to accomplish that will mitigate any drastic seasonal or annual changes. I will be talking about some of those in an upcoming series of posts, and would love to hear from my readers any ideas or actual projects they’ve entertained or engaged to help their homestead remain as self-sufficient as possible in a changing world.

It’s easy to simply say “don’t plan your homestead on any land scheduled to become sea-bottom when the ice melts.” That’s a no-brainer. But it’s also tempting to plan your homestead in heretofore unsuitable places of high elevation or northerly climes where land is cheap and dying forests are begging to be cut and turned into homes, outbuildings and fertile fields. Some climatologists warn that an unstable climate – even a warmer one – may not simply shift your homestead from one planting zone to another. Entire regions may become frozen, well south of the Arctic in places that were temperate before!

So… how are you planning to deal with the changes of climate humanity can no longer ignore? Please offer your thoughts in the comments.

I spent a lot of time in Eastern Kentucky growing up, it’s where my paternal grandparents, Aunt and cousins lived and where we spent vacations no matter where else in the country (or elsewhere) we were living at the time (Navy brat). I’ve no more relatives there, the last of them died a decade ago and none of us siblings chose to live there for raising our own families or even retiring in our old age.

I do recall several very nasty UMW strikes in the mining region around Harlan, and I recall the black moonscape on the Green River near Paducah’s western shipping point that stretched as far as the eye could see in all directions, the coal tailings having turned a lovely rolling greenscape into utterly depressing nothing. I also recall learning to shoot my father’s beautiful pearl-handled six-guns at the abandoned strip mine near Laurel, and one touristy adventure in a no longer operating underground mine where we rode through in one of those little coal rail cars as if it were an amusement park ride.

These days they do things a little differently, as the deep seams get harder to work (and miners become more rare, having been decimated by Black Lung) and the easy seams have all been stripped. Now they’re going for the mid-seams, the last of the stored coal, by simply blowing up the entire mountain to get to it.

It’s called Mountaintop Removal mining, and it’s utterly devastating the southern Appalachians in the traditional coal mining regions of Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia. It’s a horror even worse than Mister Peabody’s tailings outside Paducah. It’s destroyed ~500 whole mountains so far, it’s polluting mountain streams that contribute to the primary water supplies for millions of people downstream, and it’s killing the abundant biodiversity these mountains are so very famous for. Most of all, for those of us who dearly love these gorgeous mountains, it’s very, very tragic. Some of the mines are as big as the Island of Manhattan.

When growing up with strong ties to Kentucky, I learned from my Aunt – a state social worker – that King Coal was an “economic boom” to the people who traditionally made their means by doing things for themselves with what the mountains provided. Yet what I saw was crushing poverty, Black Lung, and a hopeless generation of young people who couldn’t wait to get as far away from their family’s traditional homesteads as possible. It’s not like the miners and their families got any of the great wealth King Coal brought to the mining companies, their stockholders and the industrial consumers of the coal taken out of their ground.

When my family determined to move back to the land 16 years ago to see if we could re-invent self-sufficiency and commune with nature instead of a million-plus other humans in immediate proximity, we chose Western North Carolina instead of Kentucky. Or Tennessee. Or West Virginia, or even Virginia (the most perfectly beautiful and well-maintained state in the union, IMO). We chose it for being Appalachia and beautiful (tourism is our largest industry), for more sophisticated residents and politics, for then-reasonable land prices, and for not being enslaved to King Coal.

But alas, this is the land of Duke Energy, and a thriving piedmont and coast full of large energy consumers. Turns out that North Carolina is the #1 consumer of coal mined by means of Mountaintop Removal. Thus I was greatly pleased when the NC State Legislature introduced a bill in May of 2008 to ban the use of coal mined by this method within the borders of our beautiful state!

There will be a lengthy legislative fight over the bill, but hope in the very fact that we did get a law back in 1983 banning development on high ridge lines – thereby destroying the mountain views from which a majority of residents make their living. Because the mountains are a gold mine simply for their beauty, there is strong incentive to keep them beautiful.

I realize that many or most of my readers don’t live in these mountains, but any of us who love the land and work hard to make our way lightly on this earth should get to know about how desperate the corporate evil-doers are to squeeze (and blast) the very last drop of profit from the earth, not caring how much irrevocable damage they do to it in the process. Educate yourself about the issue by perusing some of the great links below. Write to your state and federal representatives about your concerns, talk to activists about how to ban the burning of this ill-gotten coal in your state, and support some of these efforts to save the mountains. Please!

If there is no market for this coal, King Coal has no reason to destroy the mountains.

Links:

WattHead: Taking Mountain Top Removal On
Appalachian Voices: Geography of Mountaintop Removal
iLoveMountains: Mountaintop Removal
DKos: Mountain Mondays v 1.0
RAN: Bringing the Climate Fight to King Coal
Southern Environmental Law Center: Mountaintop Removal [TN]
NYT: Ravaging Appalachia
Stop Mountaintop Removal