Bob Edwards special on mountaintop removal mining 3

Tomorrow, beloved ex-NPR host Bob Edwards -- who now has a show on XM satellite radio -- will be doing an hour-long special on mountaintop removal mining. (A weekend version is also distributed by PRI, so check your local public-radio listings.)

I chatted with Mr. Edwards about the program yesterday, and asked him what drew him to the subject. He said:

I'm just incredulous that they're blowing up mountains. There's something wrong with that. I'm a native Kentuckian -- from Louisville -- and I find it upsetting that the landscape of my state is being radically altered, forever.

The Appalachians are the oldest mountains in America. There were there before the Ice Age. When the ice melted, you had the Appalachians and those forests to reforest the rest of the country. And we're tearing it up -- we've lost hundreds of thousands of acres of forest.

Yup.

He also lamented the lack of focus this gets from the big environmental advocacy groups and the media -- somewhat bizarre considering the almost caricatured destructiveness of the practice.

On the program, Edwards will talk to the head of the Kentucky Mining Association, along with Wendell Berry, Erik Reece, and dozens of ordinary citizens who've had their foundations cracked by the blasting, homes flooded from the reconfigured mountain runoff patterns, and relatives killed by coal trucks that are "overloaded, overweight, unregulated, driven recklessly on these narrow mountain roads."

Check it out -- should be a corker.

David Roberts is staff writer for Grist. You can follow his Twitter feed at twitter.com/drgrist.

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  1. Stentor Posted 9:44 am
    27 Jul 2006

    nitpickNitpick -- the Ice Age was pretty recent, so all our major mountains were around well before it. The Appalachians go back to the Ordovician Period (about 495-440 million years ago), while the Rockies were formed in the Cretaceous period (140 million-65 million years ago).

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  2. CharlieSummers Posted 2:00 am
    28 Jul 2006

    It is."Corker" may be an understatement.
    For those unfortunate enough not to subscribe to XM (those of us who do can wake up to Bob Edwards' interviews every weekday morning), this documentary will air this weekend (July 29-30, 2006) on Bob Edwards Weekend - check out the List of Stations or the station locater at PRI, who distributes the show. (Remember, most Public Radio stations stream on the Net, so if you're not close to an over-the-air station, you can listen that way.)
    It's also available for purchase on audible.com, but I'm not a big fan of DRM-laced media files so I can't in good conscience recommend that.

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  3. Nicephorus Posted 5:16 am
    29 Jul 2006

    Saving Kentucky MountainsI heard Bob Edward's very moving piece today, and I kept thinking one word: HEMP.  All of these problems could be easily taken care if the coal industry were replaced by the HEMP industry. Kentucky used to be a great hemp-growing place.  Perhaps someone can get the hemp movement going in full force there now. Where is the Green Party?
    HEMP - that's it.

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