Coal Companies Kill Mountains, For Fun
Every day, President Obama wakes up beside Rahm Emanuel (they are both naked) and wonders how he can force you stupid fucks to retroactively abort your children. This is his primary goal, as Commander-in-Chief. And then he gets up and does other things. One of the things “he” (as in the slaves he employs) has been up to lately is getting in the way of Clean Coal Energy.Here’s your New York Times with more:
The Army Corps of Engineers approved a permit in 2007 to blast 400 feet off the hilltops here to expose the rich coal seams, disposing of the debris in the upper reaches of six valleys, including Pigeonroost Hollow.
But the Environmental Protection Agency under the Obama administration, in a break with President George W. Bush’s more coal-friendly approach, has threatened to halt or sharply scale back the project known as Spruce 1. The agency asserts that the project would irrevocably damage streams and wildlife and violate the Clean Water Act.
Have you ever been to Southern Appalachia, dear reader? I have. I got my undergraduate degree (in Advanced Awesomeness, duh) at a great little socialist hippie farm commune down there, masquerading as a “college.” (well, well, well, look who’s listed as a NOTABLE ALUM! SEE, MOM AND DAD?!) In many ways, this scenic, bumpy region is the only place that has ever totally and completely felt like home to me. It is wonderful and beautiful and special and complicated and strange and poor and backwards and rural and conservative and weird and 100% American. Jobs are often hard to come by. In some areas, mountaintop removal is practically the only business still in business.
Strip-mining sucks the life out of the land, makes everything ugly, pumps selenium and other toxins into streams, and erases whole communities of people who are bought out by Big Coal. According to Dr. Margaret Palmer of the journal Science , “Mortality goes up as a function of the amount of mining that goes on in the counties. And it’s not just miners, it’s children and women.” This is because of exciting, sassy benefits that come along with coal-mining, like this and also these things! Working at or living near a mine is like a 401K of Agonizing Death!
Let's learn even more about the Big Coal vs. Environment situation down there, shall we?
Maria Gunnoe, an organizer for the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition and a director of SouthWings, which organizes flights to document environmental damages, said that if Spruce 1 went forward, 'it’s going to mean the permanent erasure of part of our land and our legacy.'
'We can’t keep blowing up mountains to keep the lights on,' said Ms. Gunnoe, a resident of nearby Boone County who has received death threats and travels with a 9 millimeter pistol.
Have you ever heard of an environmental activist who carries a fucking gun?! If you think Ms. Gunnoe is overrreacting, than you have never accidentally pulled into the wrong half-mile-long driveway in West Virginia at 3 AM. This is a suitable activity for anyone who has not has his or her fill of rifles and vicious dogs.
In conclusion, mining companies should fuck off and some nice, clean companies should build nice, clean manufacturing facilities in a few places in Southern Appalachia. Everything is cheap as fuck down there, and you can pay people eensy-teensy amounts of money and they can live on it, because of the Low Cost of Living. My friend lives in the Big Fancy City of Asheville, NC and her mortgage is under $800 a month. For a two-bedroom house! With chickens out back! Asheville is the most expensive place in Southern Appalachia, so think of how cheapity cheap it is to live and work in Hogsmoke, West Virginia. Captains of environmentally responsible industry, heed my cry and move to Southern Appalachia! Captains of Big Coal, go fall down an abandoned mineshaft and fucking eat shit for breakfast, the end. [ NYT ]