Mountaintop Coal Mining in West Virginia
By Rocky Thompson on February 4th, 2011
VBS TV is running a feature on mountaintop coal mining in West Virginia. The practice basically involves leveling mountains, removing one layer or rock, then a layer of coal, then another layer or rock, then coal. It’s nice because we don’t have to send people underground to die in collapsed mines, and it’s bad because, well, we’re destroying mountains and entire ecosystems with the rubble. Either way, energy production ugly. I’d be able to get a lot more authentically outraged if I wasn’t typing this on a laptop that uses metals mined from mountaintop removal and runs off a powergrid stoked with coal. Check out the feature, it’s worth it.
Rocky, gotta say, your post is one of the weakest treatments/tacit approvals of mountaintop removal that I’ve read. The safety of underground mines is more a factor of the coal company’s policies, http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/06082/675154.stm, and the impacts of MTM are just unbelievably devastating, http://www.gmu.edu/org/environment/mtr/Science_Mountaintop_Removal.pdf.