The night I arrived I stopped at Applebee's for a bite to eat--we'll deal with that decision another time--and there were some kids at the next table and a couple of them were wearing t-shirts, presumably for one of their school's sports teams, that listed sponsors on the back, including Friends of Coal. The indoctrination is probably fairly complete by high school anyway.
I was in Eastern Kentucky for four days and in that time there were two different pro-coal events in town. There was a coal industry meeting designed to assure the community that coal will be around for more than a hundred and fifty years. They were there to make sure the local newscasters used the words "clean coal" at least three times in three minutes. They were successful because, of course, the local news team did nothing to inform their viewers that "clean coal" is a mythical vapor-ware technology designed to buy the coal industry time. The other event was an "energy summit" featuring a climate "scientist" who is "not sponsored by the coal industry." Note: The petroleum industry is not the coal industry. Hmmm.
According to my brother, Pikeville just recently voted to disallow mountaintop removal. If this is true, they have my admiration. However, if this ruling does exist it doesn't extend to the county--Jon showed me a horrible example of mountaintop removal that is ongoing and blatantly obvious. From the new road (which covers the house my mother grew up in, by the way) you can see the remains of a mountain that once stood twice as high as it does now--and they're still stripping it down layer by layer. We could see a bulldozer driving down the center of the project. If you look at the pictures you will see the flattened section in the middle. The last time I was in Kentucky that flat spot was more than twice as high as the ridge immediately to the right. These projects are all over the coal mining regions of the Appalachian Mountains. The very real health and environmental dangers of this mining method cannot be stressed enough. There are no enforceable restrictions on what the mining companies do with the tailings and waste products from these methods. Much of it ends up in the surrounding valleys and rivers, creeks, etc., poisoning the ground water and damaging ecosystems and critical habitat for many species. And even if these dangers don't concern you, just look at it! Our Appalachian Mountains are disappearing for nothing more than huge profits for corporations who could not care less about the people whose lives they are destroying in the process.
