#mountaintop removal mining

I’ve written many times about the “despicable practice” of mountaintop removal mining.  (Al Gore called it that – and he couldn’t be more right.)  There’s an op-ed in the NY Times today from one of the co-authors of a new book:  Something’s Rising: Appalachians Fighting Mountaintop Removal.  Silas House remind us in “My Polluted Kentucky […]

Invoking a rarely used feature of the Clean Water Act that allows EPA to bar actions that would cause “unacceptable adverse effects” to the environment, water quality, or water supplies, the agency halted a major mountaintop removal mining project.  The EPA release quotes EPA Assistant Administrator for Water Peter S. Silva:  “The proposed Spruce No. […]

In the spirit of yesterday’s photos of the Gulf of Mexico, this photo essay from Newsweek is also resonant. I would’ve added the Canadian tar sands and mountaintop removal mining. 

As you know if you follow the blog at all, mountaintop removal mining is right up there with tar sands extraction at the top of my list of destructive, hateful businesses.  Al Gore calls it a “despicable practice” in Our Choice.  (This, by the way, is a truly terrific book.) Here is an article from […]

The excellent “Green Energy Reporter” had an item noting a new study on mountaintop removal mining and Stephen Colbert’s take.  There are huge environmental and health impacts associated with coal mining, as I’ve noted a number of times, here and here, among others. Now a group of scientists, led by the University of Maryland’s Dr. […]

I wrote recently about some solid policy analysis that would move the US off its massive dependency on coal for electricity toward a greater reliance on natural gas – until renewables fully kick into their potential.  (Limitless, not incidentally.)  A few days after my post, there was a depressing article in the “NY Times” about […]

I’ve written about the truly heinous practice of mountaintop removal mining in Appalachia a number of times, most recently here and here.  An amazing activist, Maria Gunnoe, is featured in both the superb documentary, Burning the Future, and in the magisterial book Big Coal.  Now Gunnoe has garnered international recognition for her work by winning […]

Mountaintop Removal Mining – The Beginning of the End? – I have written here a number of times about the crime of mountaintop removal mining, most recently in “Appalachia’s Agony”.  Now the EPA has responded, finally, to the SOS of the residents of West Virginia, Kentucky and the other states where the mining companies have […]

I got back about an hour ago from walking my daughter to school.  We live in a big city with a big park through which my wife or I walk the kid.  It was snowing this morning – one of those intense squalls that come to us here in late winter and early spring.  It […]

That’s the title of the editorial from yesterday’s “NY Times” about The Crime of Mountaintop Removal Mining.  I’ve been writing about this travesty for nearly a year here.  My concern was triggered by this truly outstanding documentary, Burning the Future: Coal in America, and meeting the filmmaker and having him in my climate change class. […]

With the West Virginia primary tomorrow, and Kentucky next week, coal and coal mining become more visible as issues.  I wrote about this in April at Quick Political Note , Coal and the Candidates. The Sundance Channel is going to premier a blockbuster movie, Burning the Future: Coal in America, tomorrow night.  That’s 9:35 PM […]

We’ve seen a couple of great documentaries in my climate change class recently: Fighting Goliath and Burning the Future: Coal in America. I’m particularly excited that we’re having Burning the Future’s director in next week. We’re also reading the outstanding Big Coal. So, we’re into coal, in a big way. More about the documentaries and […]