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Jax
I happened to catch an interview on Bob Edwards Weekend with the people involved with the film The Last Mountain which is about mountaintop removal for coal in West Virginia.
There are so many negative aspects of this practice that it’s astounding. First, it pollutes on so many levels. It destroys the health of the local people. It keeps all other industry and business away, preventing the local population from elevating their quality of life. It’s truly disgusting to me. I hope enough people awaken in the next few years to break this industry because it’s running wild with no real checks.
I hope I can watch this movie and not completely lose my temper. But I was already pretty angry just listening to this. The reason is perhaps even more than the practice itself but the helplessness I feel in not knowing how to fix it. I mean, Massey Energy is the big player here. They blow up mines and still aren’t shut down. They rack up tens of thousands of environmental violations and nothing happens. What can we do?
Kol Drake
Think we touched on this a while ago with this post
http://instituteforjedirealiststudies.org/smf/index.php?topic=1589.msg13758#msg13758
… about Na’vi protesting about a British Company about to strip mine a sacred Indian Burial Mountain site.
Most of this kind of mining goes unseen – so, unnoticed by the majority. It is in remote places; the folks doing it are locals who are dependent on the work to survive (same for deep dig miners) and the companies spend tons of ‘lobbying money’ to keep it ‘acceptable’ in the circles of politics.
Only these kind of protests; the articles I cite in the other thread; your movie — help expose shoddy practices and how toxic this is to the environment locally and in worldwide.
Very true Kol. I think I got a little news overload this past week or two which is getting me almost overwhelmed at finding so many things to be ‘righteously angry’ about. Our local public radio station changed to two stations so they now have news and talk 24 hours a day. I haven’t turned it off since they started! This allows me to know way more than I did before and I’m not sure how to process it all yet.
I hope this movie gets a lot of play and awakens people. I recognize that there’s got to be another side to the story, or that they may be leaning heavily in one direction which creates an unbalanced perspective, but it sure seems to be on the right side of the story at least. I really wish our government wasn’t so controlled or influenced by these companies so we could get clean, unbiased science to help guide the way. And that we had an educated public that would understand a solid scientific argument when it saw it. Ah, look at me dream.
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