Mountaintop Removal for Coal

The Obama administration's EPA is considering more stringent enforcement of the Clean Water Act and a crack down on the coal industry's mountaintop removal mining. It's about time. (Click on the title for a New York Times article on the subject.)

The mountains of West Virginia and Kentucky are being sacrificed to our need for electricity. While windmill farms in upstate New York are contested by environmentalists, entire mountains are disappearing, waterways are fouled, habitats are erased from existence to extract coal and feed our insatiable appetite for energy.

We have watched in breathless horror the destruction of wildlife, fishing and environment in the Gulf of Mexico. The mining industry's devastation of huge swathes of two Appalachian states has been ongoing for years, pretty much off the radar screen. From a window seat on a transcontinental flight, you occasionally get a shocking view of it, if you care to look. Apparently no one cares about these two rural states. Even many of their residents support mining -- for the same reason many Gulf State residents support offshore drilling operations -- their livelihoods. When does the tipping point occur when the jobs by which we make our livings and our obsession with an ever more complicated standard of living render human life itself unsustainable?

President Carter was ridiculed and criticized for urging Americans to adopt more conservative habits, including lowering thermostats in winter and wearing sweaters.

What is wrong with a little self sacrifice in our own self interest?