I have to wonder why?
Posted on November 7, 2009 | By Denny Tyler | No Comments
To be completely honest, I don’t know why I keep going back. But, I went back today and one reason was for the view.
The photo above was taken from the head of a hollow in Drew’s Creek looking east into Raleigh County. The photos below were taken from the same area looking northwest towards Boone County.
I know it is much too late to prevent the destruction of this mountain or the one in the distance, but yet I keep going back. Maybe it has something to do with morbid curiosity. You know like when you see a car wreck on the highway and you just have to crane your neck to look or a house catching fire and everybody stops to watch the flames eat the house away to nothing all the while asking the folks gathered around if anybody was hurt in the blaze. There is nothing you can do about it… it’s just morbid curiosity.
I keep going back to watch the mountains become something else entirely. They go from being gently sloping hills and beautiful valleys to signs of desperation, greed or both seemingly overnight.
I say desperation and/or greed because I don’t know what the prime motivator is for mountaintop removal coal mining. If we are using the MTR method because it is the only way to get the thin seams of coal near the top, which is quoted a lot, then I would have to say the prime motivator for mountaintop removal would be desperation. If we are willing to destroy so much and jeopardize so much more to get thin seams of coal near the surface then we must be running out of reserves. If we justify MTR with jobs then first we have to forget the loss of jobs to mountaintop removal while at the same time not saying we are to dumb to do anything else, we’re desperate.
If mountaintop removal coal mining is done because it is the most economical and cost effective method of mining coal, which is also quoted often, then I would have to say greed is the prime motivator. Also, if we are doing MTR because we need 1000′s of acres of flat land for future development, yeah people really say it, then I think that is a sign of greed as well. Promising future development for these sites is like a West Virginia politician saying trust me. Uh… yeah… when pigs fly.
Not too long ago someone asked me, sarcastically of course, if there was a developer willing to build the Coal River Wind Farm? I would have to ask an equally sarcastic question back… is there a developer willing to build anything on the mountaintop removal site pictured? Or hell for that matter, the one in the distance or the new MTR site going on Coal River Mtn.? Do any of those properties have a developer? No… ?? I would say no is the only logical answer simply because if the coal industry had developers for these wastelands then every time we turn on the radio or TV we would have that information getting shoveled down our throats right behind clean coal and carbon neutral.
I guess I get a little irritated when I visit a mountaintop removal site. To stand on a mountain that is being destroyed for coal and look out across numerous mountains and valleys getting destroyed for the same reason, it just seems senseless and I have to wonder why? Not a single one of the readily available justifications seems to work with the sheer amount of destruction right in front of my eyes.
Maybe we should search for new innovative ways to achieve sustainability, to achieve economic stability, and to generate electricity instead of relentlessly searching for new innovative ways to justify mountaintop removal coal mining.
Our remnants of wilderness will yield bigger values to the nation’s character and health than they will to its pocketbook, and to destroy them will be to admit that the latter are the only values that interest us. – Aldo Leopold
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