We destroy mountain tops to burn dirty coal.
Right now, while you and I go about our daily business, 2 young people have willingly put themselves in peril for what they believe in: saving forests and an entire mountain in West Virginia from destruction.
Becks Kolins, age 21, and Catherine Ann MacDougal, 24, now live, day and night, 80 feet off the ground, on platforms built into trees on Coal River Mountain, WW. This is land under “mountain top removal coal mining operations” by Alpha Natural Resources. (You can click Alphas link and tell them what you think.) I put quotes around that phrase because the words don’t do it justice. We humans now have the power to DYNAMITE AN ENTIRE MOUNTAIN TOP INTO OBLIVION.
Becks and Catherine, in trees just 300 feet from blasting operations, are on day 12 today, Monday, August 1st. Withstanding heat and bugs and noise and company harassment, they’re already the longest tree sit in West Virginia history.
Alpha Natural Resources has the legal right to do this, but these environmental activists think it isn’t MORALLY right or environmentally sane. I agree with them and their choice of non-violent civil disobedience to spotlight the huge harm coal mining does, especially in pristine wilderness areas. It’s a dirty short-term game for a big net loss, both environmentally and economically. (If you agree, click Alpha’s link and tell them so.)
tree sitters at red & white arrow
Share this post to bring attention to this deadly, destructive and ultimately expensive practice. Expensive, if you factor in community and regional health costs—cancer rates skyrocket in surrounding communities because of air and groundwater pollutants. Alpha predictably denies any correlation and claims there is no conclusive proof of a coal-cancer connection. The affected health and the testimony of rural neighbors, often poor and without voice, say otherwise, as does common sense.
Coal is dirty at every stage, from extraction to end use. Mining and its carcinogenic by-products kill or harm humans, animals, fish, insects—all members of an interconnected web of life we learned about in grade school — and depend on for our survival. Left to their legal coal “removal” operations-as-usual, Coal River Mountain would be destroyed forever, and the surrounding air, land and water fouled for generations.
The Good News: We can expose the massive harm these operations do, and wean ourselves off toxic fossil fuels onto cleaner, modern, renewable energies like wind, solar, and geothermal.
Learn more about activists challenging mountaintop removal coal mining: www.rampscampaign.org.
Please share this post to bring attention to this deadly, expensive and self-destructive practice.
For all our sakes,
Jack Gescheidt