Stephen Colbert Tackles Mountaintop Removal

View the clip here. If mainstream media is finally covering mountaintop removal, maybe change will finally happen.

Drowning Tuvalu

You don’t have to be religious to believe in karma. Every action that we take, however small, has a ripple effect on the world around us. Thus, it is in the name of prosperity and modernization, the Pacific Island nation of Tuvalu is drowning due to global warming.

Never heard of Tuvalu? You should have. Every time you see a .tv domain name, it was bought from the tiny island of Tuvalu. In fact, the country makes a lot of money selling domain names–$50 million over a twelve-year period. Yet, the Verisign company, which registers .tv domains, makes no mention whatsoever of the island on their website.

While some people, my brother and my tenth grade Biology book among them, say that global warming is a myth, Tuvalu is disappearing. The rising sea level floods homes and creates “climate refugees.” If nothing changes, Tuvalu will be extinct within one-hundred years, and all residents would have to leave their homes within fifty years. The government of Tuvalu has requested refugee status from Australia, but the country refuses to grant this; New Zealand accepts 75 Tuvalu refugees per year.

Even if greenhouse gas emissions were stabilized, Tuvalu would still continue to be flooded by rising sea levels. A gauge installed in 1993 by Australia’s National Tidal Center has shown that the sea levels have been rising 5.7mm each year. As a result of this, salt water is killing coconut plantations and pulaka.

What the people of Tuvalu want is, if they cannot retain their island, to maintain their nation and identity within another country–preferably Australia, considering Tuvalu has a long history with the country and uses Australian currency.

I know what my brother would argue. He would say that the weather often becomes cooler, then hotter, back and forth, so the idea of the world suddenly becoming so unnaturally warm is laughable. Not long ago, he was trying to argue that we were entering a tiny Ice Age (yeah, it’s called El Nino), even. He would say that if this island really was disappearing, that it didn’t matter anyway because it’s so very small. Only 10,000 people live on the island and, in some places, it’s only as wide as a highway. The implication would be that, as people who were not white or American, they must be one step above barbarians anyway. (This would be where I’d want to forget my pacifism.) No matter what such a small, racist mind would argue, Tuvaluans are just people like anyone else and just because their way of life is different than our own does not make it any less of a life. While we might not be able to save Tuvalu, is it really asking so much to consider what our way of life is doing to the world around us?

Can a Country Have a Nervous Breakdown?

According to this . . . articulate . . . blogger, it can. (I wonder if disabilist language means anything to this person?) Let us respond to this in Red Skelton Pledge-of-Allegiance form.

It’s insanity.

First of all, congratulations on causing me to disregard you at the very second word in your entry. This is truly impressive. That said, insanity is a legal word, meaning such unsoundness of mind as affects legal responsibility or capacity. Thus, you’re saying that the US cannot govern itself or be held responsible for its actions and requires a legal guardian to make all decisions for it. That’s not insulting at all. I overlooked the antiquated term “nervous breakdown” in the title, giving you, perhaps, poetic license for such melodrama. Now, you see, at word number two, it becomes clear to me that you have no concept of modern psychology or the meaning of your own words. Further, at word number one, you have no concept of proper conjugation. “It is insanity?” The United States, itself, is the epitome of legal insanity? Do tell. Now, see, I must continue reading this drivel just for my own giggles at what such a brilliant mind could create.

It’s insanity, war, homelessness, job loss, food shortages at pantries, request for food stamps at a record high, crime is rising, people fear for their health, robber barons bankers sucking us dry.

It would just be mean to point out that this isn’t a complete sentence, wouldn’t it? In fact, it’s just a jumble of thoughts with no connections or point. Despite the improper conjugation at word number one, this sentence lacks a verb; thus, it has no action. That said, I pray tell what you, dear blogger, are doing to change any of these things. Are you protesting the war? Are you helping the homeless? Donating food?

robber barons bankers sucking us dry

Robber baron bankers? While I could write a dissertation, I, instead, will leave you with this and the sound of me giggling.

The country is having a nervous breakdown

Can a country have a “nervous breakdown?” Can a country have any mental affliction? If so, where is the mind of the country located? I want to guess Montana, buried deep beneath that big sky country; or, perhaps, in the Appalachians of Kentucky or West Virginia, among those purple mountain majesties. If someone were blowing me up on a regular basis for coal, I’d have issues too. If a country has a mind, where is its liver? I can only be corny and guess the wine country of California.

and surrounding this malady

malady, n. any disorder or disease of the body, esp. one that is chronic or deepseated.

If this “insanity” of which you speak is not a one-time “breakdown,” but is, instead, a chronic malady, this means it’s not going to go away. Alas, our poor country is going to have to live with its issues for the rest of its life. How do you talk to a country about its problems? How do you tell a hunk of earth that you’re there for it if it needs a shoulder to lean upon? How do you force a country to take its medication and smile again? Perhaps this has been going on so long, it can no longer remember what it was to truly be happy. Perhaps it can only think of the inequalities in its life, instead of those spacious skies and amber waves of grain. Perhaps while its citizens killed each other and poisoned it and neglected one another, it saw everything, while the rest of us turn our heads. Maybe when we don’t see that beggar, the country wishes it has hands so that it could spare a dime, brother. What if we are what sickens the country? What if we need the help and the country is only responding in the way anyone who witnessed such abuse and was unable to do anything to stop it would?

are the vultures ready to scavenge the vulnerable – the tattered signs of an uncivilized, barbaric and criminal nation. We’re loosing justice and tossing the rule of law out the window and when that happens we also lose mercy.

True, it is only now in recent history that we have lost “mercy.” When the first explorers raped and pillaged the Native population, there was mercy. When innocent colonists were hanged as witches, there was mercy. When human beings were used as slaves and considered 3/5 people, there was mercy. When Native children were separated from their families to be “civilized” at boarding schools, there was mercy. When 146 people died at the Triangle Shirt Factory fire because the doors were all locked and there were no fire escapes because the bosses didn’t want the workers to take breaks, there was mercy. When the Japanese-Americans were rounded up and placed in internment camps during WWII, there was mercy. When those perceived to be gays or Communists were tried by the House Unamerican Activities Committee in front of the entire country, there was mercy. Never before in the history of our country have we acted as “vultures”–uncivilized, barbaric, criminal, or merciless.

Next to the Civil War this is a very low point in US history, simply because we’ve lost the most important thing any great nations could acquire, trust.

Again, your perceptiveness baffles me. How wise of you to think that our current problems even begin to compare to the Civil War, when half the country seceded from the Union and the issues of slavery and freedom for all turned brother against brother; American against American. Let us go have a picnic and watch our countrymen die in battle before our eyes. Oh, what’s that? The current war isn’t shown on television the way Vietnam was, so we easily place it out of our minds unless we get our news from independent media?

Also, I’m so glad you mentioned that every country in the world trusted us before this war. Could you remind Venezuela and the majority of the rest of Latin America about this? ‘Cause, see, they’ve seemed to think we were imperialists ever since we invaded them back around WWI for their oil and such. Wait, where have I heard this story before? Don’t tell me . . .

What If Every Time You Turned on the Lights, a Child Was Harmed?

It happens every day in Appalachia. Due to our dependence on coal produced by mountaintop removal mining, communities are poisoned, mountains are blown up, and the people that have lived in these areas for generations are sickened. How do you feel about this being done in your name?

Wind energy would provide more jobs for more people, wouldn’t poison the people, or blow up the mountains.

Does Your State Purchase Coal from Mountaintop Removal Mining?

Mine does. Both my home state and my adopted state still have yet to protest this moonscape-making-mining practice–but some states are. Georgia, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, and West Virginia have all introduced legislation to stop their states from buying any more coal from mountaintop removal mining. It interests me that the very states that are introducing this legislation are also in the Appalachian Mountains, and many of these states have had their own mountains blasted to fuel the nation.

To learn how you can make a difference, click here.

What if Gas Were $20/Gallon?

While listening to NPR today, I heard a discussion of how wonderful it would be if gas were $20/gallon. This is where I wanted to call in and ask “Are you smoking crack?”

According to Chris Steiner, author of “$20 per Gallon,” gas being this high would be beneficial to reversing globalization. If gas were this high, produce would no longer come from other countries because it would simply be too expensive. Instead, local farmers would be able to sell their produce in supermarkets. Pollution would not be as bad because, he reasons, people would move into the cities to be near their jobs, or find new jobs nearer their homes.

Well, that’s just peachy and idealistic and short-sighted. Yeah, produce would be more geared towards local farmers–because people would be too poor to buy anything else. More people would use public transport in areas that have it–because people would be too poor to drive their own cars. Bus fare would be astronomical too. Right now, CTTransit is facing a fight because it wants to raise fares from $1.25 to $2/ride. Can you imagine how expensive it would be if gas were $20/gallon? Some people might move or look for jobs closer to home, but did it ever occur to you that people might like their homes? That they might live where they do for a reason? My parents live in my granny’s old house. They would never move. If they had to sell their home and move into town, they’d be heartbroken. Likewise, a lot of people in my hometown commute 70 miles to Little Rock for work every day. Many of these people like living in a small town, and like raising their children in a small town with the lowest crime rate in the state. Many of these people grew up in the area themselves. Other people have moved in and put down roots. If they wanted to live in Little Rock, they would. As for public transit, my hometown doesn’t have it. All the people who could no longer afford to drive their cars would just be screwed.

If gas were $20/gallon, more people would steal it from other cars. More people would steal from others in order to afford gas. Have you ever played the what-if game where you ask the other person something along the lines of, If you were poor and starving, would you steal? When gas is this high, it becomes a very real situation to be honest and die, or to steal and eat for many, many people. Aren’t there enough homeless people in the world? Aren’t there enough hungry people?

“What would your life be like if gas were $20/gallon?” The man on the radio asked. I’d starve, that’s what–and I don’t even own a car. It must be nice to have enough money to think gas could be that expensive, and to only think how great this would be for the economy.

Why Does Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining Matter?

 

After all, it’s not my mountains being blown up. It’s not my home being destroyed. But it’s someone’s home.

In West Virginia and throughout the Appalachian Mountains, people are dying from the floods caused by mountaintop removal. Elementary school children are exposed to pollution caused by the coal sludge impoundments only 400 yards away from their school. An Eastern Kentucky University study found that the children of Letcher County, Kentucky, suffered a high rate of blue baby syndrome, which has the long-term health effects of liver, kidney, and spleen failure, bone damage, and cancers of the digestive tract.

People are dying. The landscape of Appalachia is being forever changed.

And it’s our fault. We, in our insatiable desire for energy and power and money, forgot about the people of Appalachia. We turned a blind eye, or our mainstream media did it for us, when another Appalachian town was washed away when the coal sludge flooded the local streams and rivers. We didn’t care about the poverty of the Appalachian people that lead them to the coal mines. We didn’t think of our ability to stop the destruction of the Appalachias when flying over them in our cozy commercial planes with air conditioning and complimentary Coke products.

“This wouldn’t go on in New England,” Jack Spadaro told me last July, up at Larry Gibson’s place. It wouldn’t go on in California, nor Florida, nor along the East Coast. After the ’60s, America and the mainstream media seemed to lose interest in the problems of Appalachia. Though the Martin County slurry pond disaster was 20 times larger than the Exxon Valdez spill, The New York Times ignored it for months. But the seeming invisibility of the people in Appalachia does not make their plight any less real.

Our power, our luxury, comes on the backs of the Appalachian people, who continue to be impoverished by greedy coal companies who blow up entire mountains these days for coal because, this way, they have to hire fewer workers and make more money quicker. Building wind turbines on the mountains would do zero damage to the environment and allow more people in Appalachia to be employed, but the coal companies continue to be uninterested in spreading the wealth around. To date, over five-hundred mountains have been destroyed in the names of you and I, so we can write angry blogs, or see what we’re doing, or watch tv, blind to the creation of a moonscape in Appalachia. How do you feel about that?

For Purple Mountain Majesties

America is not so beautiful in the Appalachians anymore. So far, 500 mountains have been destroyed to harvest coal to provide electricity throughout the United States. I see the lunar environment when I fly back and forth to visit my parents over the Appalachians, miles and miles of death and destruction amid gorgeous green mountains and rivers. Pretty soon, more of those gorgeous green mountains will look like the face of the moon.

Once upon a time, miners dug pits to retrieve coal. Now it’s easier for the companies to just blow the mountains up, scrape off the dirt and the rocks, and take all the coal. When this happens, coal mining ruins the ecosystem around it. All the trees are clear-cut off the sides of the mountain. Streams are polluted and flooded. Animals are left without homes, as are the people when their homes are flooded, assuming they don’t drown in their own front yards. All of this happens in the second-most biologically diverse area of the world, after only the rainforests.

Many people argue that this shouldn’t change because those miners need jobs, but the fact is that the coal companies blow the mountains up because they need fewer workers this way and make more money while destroying the landscape forever. If coal miners again descended into the mines or if green energy options, such as wind farms, were considered, more people could have jobs. According to this map, unemployment is greatest where mountaintop removal mining occurs.

To learn more and to find out where your electricity comes from, visit iLoveMountains.org.