Obama,mountaintop removal and the hypocrisy of his green campaign.

recently i was made aware of Obamas stance on mountaintop removal for coal. its disturbing to say the least.

Obama's new mountaintop removal plan

Obama and EPA allow mountaintop coal removal

Obama fights ruling to block streamlined mine permits

Controversial Coal Mining Method Gets Obama's OK

Obama Closes Doors on Openness

this is one of the most environmentally destructive ways to feed our appetite for energy that there is and he approves 24 mountaintops for removal in WV alone..

for those unaware of the destruction this causes please educate yourselves.



Toxic West Virginia: Mountaintop Removal- Episode 1



Mountaintop Removal Movie from iLoveMountains.org



http://www.mountainjusticesummer.org/news.php


remember this when the cost of your utilities,fuel for your vehicles etc. go up 4000 dollars a year due to the carbon credit program he is pushing.

 

troubling news. mountain top removal is about the worst evironmental disaster there is.

 

yeah we would of been so much better off with theses two

 

there were other choices and there will be again. the object is to wake enough people up to effect change.

vote libertarian,vote green,vote constitution party,vote for anybody as long as they dont have a R or D beside there name.

 

it's not Arab coal is it?

 

truth is most our fuel comes from canada ,wanna see pictures of the sand pits?


its not about where it comes from,its about care taking mother earth,walking softly and sustainably.

people need to wake up and see what they are doing to our environment while demanding we become more sustainable and pay for every ounce of carbon we release into the atmosphere.

its hypocrisy at its finest.

 

Coal is bad, m'kay.

 

lol people need to wake up! HAAAA people actually have a deep need to stay asleep. That misrepresents the situation. I find it is a fight that cant be won. LEts see 300 million people in NORTH AMERICA. About a maximum of 10 000 people are aware of the problems, 1 000 actually are living a lifestyle aimed at changing things for the better and succeeding because they do not face the price penalities of doing so. Okay so that leaves 299 999 000 to go. Tea anyone.....? I take mine with a cup of self-sufficiency, in spite of the disasters that await like ticking time bombs.

 

i would like to think the percentages of those who see and those who are striving for a sustainable life are a bit higher.

i know i am a pessimist but you just made me look like a optimist..lol

 

I dont see why. I wasnt really refering to you in a specific sort of way. Its just that I see this, 'people need to wake up' alot and its the complete opposite. Peoples needs do not coincide with having to wake up. The coincide with living in a little ignroant bubble. There is this huge trend out there to follow immidiate pleasure as oposed to long-term. Alll environmental problems will bring long-term pain and researching and fessing up to them means would bring long-term pleasures only. The horrible thing about it is that people whop have had nothing to do with the problems, will face them worst of all. I think this reality is inherently chaotic, I hate this world with a deep passion and look forward to dying because of it.

 

There are quite a few people in West Virginia that want a limited amount of mountaintop removal for coal mining because of the severely limited amount of useful flat land in the state. In the coalfields, flat land is needed for housing, businesses, schools, and sports facilities. This is not the case in eastern WV, where you find pristine national forest land, ski resorts, limestone ridges, and broad, open valleys.

 

oh i am sure there are. there are idiots all over,look how many voted for obama.

it doesnt change the fact that the practice is one of the most environmentally destructive ways of harvesting fuel for energy there is. yet mr green jeans in the whitehouse looks the other way and says go ahead boys,rape the land.

 

That's pretty much a totally lame excuse. There are very limited jobs so the population is not all that big. We don't need too many sprawling metropolis's or shopping centers, the ones we have are not doin' so hot. And a lot of those mountaintop mines are too far from any kind of population centers to be of much use for stuff like that. The folks there are too poor, thanks to the coal companies, to afford much shopping at any big centers anyhow. School consolidation was an enormous mistake, and building schools on those mine sites would only create hour long or longer school bus rides ONE WAY on dangerous and coal truck rutted winding mountain roads.... And where is all the water supposed to come from for these large undertakings, as the water table there has become so contaminated by coal mining that some of it actually burns the skin? Sickness is rampant. And those poor souls who still think they have to live there, or the ones fighting to keep their family homesteads, a lot of them have been brainwashed into thinking that if they shut down mining, their menfolk will be OUT OF WORK as if there were absolutely NOTHING to take it's place. And there just about isn't, because the coal companies have made those areas nearly uninhabitable....

And just as a side note, but a very BIG one: If you are not familiar with it, DON BLANKENSHIP of MASSEY COAL is probably one of the most corrupt people in WV. He's bought his way into just about everything he wants by fixing the WV Supreme Court with his money... Just Google it. Secretive trips to the Riviera and all... John Grisholm actually wrote a novel about it....

 

...which is why it needs to be limited in scope. We are talking about parts of WV where every acre of flat land has to be blasted out of solid rock. Nobody is going to come to these areas to see mountain scenery no matter what, so forcing the coal company to return the mountain face to a 45-degree slope doesn't make a lot of sense. At the very least, the coal company should have the opportunity to try and sell the land to somebody who prefers it flat. At least the mountaintops are safe from deadly floods.

A lot of flatland environmentalists probably have trouble visualizing what these areas look like now. They are already impoverished coal mining wastelands, with nothing in common with the limestone and granite (vs. sandstone) mountains that draw tourists and nature lovers. I love mountains, but the WV coalfields could spare one percent of their total number.

 

your missing the whole point. it doesnt matter if it was totally worthless land in the middle of nowhere. what they are doing to mother earth will take eons for it to recover.

limited in scope? it should be outlawed. and i would hardly call 25 mountaintops, "limited in scope" anyway.

 

.....Nor over 700 miles of buried streams and destroyed ecosystems.

dude, these mountains are/were as pristine as it gets - tourist, hunter, fishermans paradise. It does not get any better. Period. So don't even go there. And that bit about "every acre of flatland has to be blasted..... is just plain bull. The fact is, there are places that are NOT flat, and not SUPPOSED to be flat, nor EXPECTED to be flat, and therefore, people who live there are not expecting it to be flat....

Then too, there is no topsoil on those new flat places, the watershed is RUINED (how do you get THAT back) The ecology is all different because it will, like HHB said, take eons for the natural habitat to come back. And the hills are gone forever. The mountain streams forever polluted, and huge sections of the state left uninhabitable even tho people still live there. actually, there IS no excuse. Mountaintop removal contributes something like 8% of the nation's energy, which is almost nothing compared to the destruction it causes.

It's not just the coal mining ruining everything, the coal-to-electric plants add to the pollution problem. WV happens to be the most polluted state in the US.

 

If it's land nobody wants to even go to and look at, why would anyone want to buy it? The reason people still live there is because if they own their own place, it is worth about 2 cents now and they can not sell. And the miles of buried watershed combined with the big coal slurry lakes are the CAUSE of a tremendious amount of flooding.

Yea, exactly. Listen to yourself. They are. Because of the mountaintop removal coal mining and generations of coal mining slavery for the big coal bosses like Blankenship.

 

Do you have any idea how many small sandstone mountaintops the WV coalfields have? Thousands. These are not large mountains. Most rise no more than 1200 feet above the surrounding valleys.

I used to travel that area on business, and I understand the coalfields very well. I know the land and the people. I have driven thousands of miles in that area, and dealt with all kinds of folks there, from politicians and mine owners to miners and schoolteachers and retired railroad workers. It is nothing at all like any other part of America.

The thing that always pissed off the local people the most was interference from outsiders who would never visit any of those places under any circumstances. Southeastern WV is one of the toughest places in America to live, and it is made worse by decisions made in Washington, DC by people who are trying to make laws and regulations that make sense for the rest of the country, no matter how absurd they are for that particular area. There is no way that Washington can know what is best for southeastern WV.

What county do you live in? I'm betting that you are within 40 miles of the Virginia border. The mindset and culture is completely different in that part of WV. The quality of life is much higher there.

Of the 25 proposed mountaintop locations, do you know of a specific example of one near a pristine natural area? I would like to see some details. I'm finding this hard to believe.

The entire area from Welch to Logan is more than a 2-hour drive from the nearest natural flat spot, unless you count the riverbeds. Most valleys have a ledge blasted out of solid rock for the highway, and another ledge on the other side of the river for the railroad. The houses cling to the 45-degree slopes, usually below the 10-year high water mark. If you climb to the top of the mountain and look over the edge, you will see another valley exactly like the one you just climbed out of.

No, the local people do not expect anyplace to be flat. They expect everything in life to be hard and unpleasant, because it always has been. They have learned not to expect clean water, good schools, modern hospitals, or places to shop that do not require a 2-hour drive, but they would like to have all those things.

They know that nearly everybody in a position of power is their enemy. The coal companies want to remove billions of dollars worth of coal and give next to nothing back to the local community. (County property taxes are not based on the value of underground minerals.) Politicians are routinely paid off by the coal companies, and environmentalists (from a WV perspective) would rather save a salamander than a child in the coalfields. Nobody has ever tried to do anything for them, except for labor unions.

I personally don't understand anybody wanting to live there, but it isn't my place or yours to tell them they can't. To deny them basic survival needs is simply inhuman. Current federal environmental laws give no consideration to their situation.

If Uncle Sam wanted to move them all out and convert it to a wilderness preserve, that would be a different story. The locals would be entitled to fair compensation and relocation assistance. That isn't going to happen. We don't need that many acres of wilderness.

As long as anybody lives in the coalfields, they will need flat land, whether they have any or not. People will always live there because there will always be a few jobs. Even a robot mining machine needs an operator and a maintenance mechanic. The railroad needs employees to move the coal out, and there has to be basic infrastructure maintenance. Some people who grew up there will want to stay because it is home.

Ideally, I would like to see some federal money made available to relocate people and key facilities to higher ground. This revenue could come from the proposed carbon tax. WV has very few flood control dams because most of the profit from mining operations has always flowed out of the state to large corporate owners. Most of the money in Charleston comes from the chemical industry.

The flooding is entirely natural because thunderstorm runoff in the coalfields is greater than 90 percent. There is no soil on those mountains at all. The trees put their roots into cracks in the rock. If you climb up a power line cut through the woods, you will see that there is almost no weeds, vines, or underbrush beneath those trees because there is no soil for their roots. Rotting leaves may produce an inch or two here and there, trapped behind a rock or stump.

Slurry lakes can make runoff dirty and contaminated, but they don't add any water unless a dam breaks, like it did in Tennessee last year, at the TVA power plant.

 

once again, i dont care if its 100 foot off one mountaintop that only rises up 800 feet out of the valley its one too many.

its not necessary,it destroys the environment and obama by allowing this has once again proved himself to be a liar and a hypocrite.

on flooding,

Mountaintop removal worsens flooding, Government study finds

http://www.epa.gov/Region3/mtntop/eis2003appendices.htm#apph

on a pristine area,one we are still battling to save,coal river mountain.


(please note the comparison of energy and jobs produced with wind over coal in the same area )

http://www.ilovemountains.org/news/426

and one that was saved,blair mountain.


sadly only because of its historic significance..

Jeff Biggers: Big Coal Defeat! Rednecks and Greens Announce Victory at Blair Mountain

pristine enough for you? of course it wont be..

and for the record,two out of three WV voters OPPOSE mountaintop removal

2 out of 3 West Virginia voters oppose mountaintop removal.

personally i think your trying to defend a indefensible act.

 

Gosh... we got Mr. Greenjeans... when we could of had Capt. Kangaroo:rofl: