Thanks to this comment from Chris (proprietor of the excellent OrganicMatter blog), I came across this diary over at DailyKos, which is one of the best I've ever read.
It's about coal, and it's written by a guy who grew up around coal mining and has been involved in the industry his whole life (and still is). Quit reading this and go read it instead.
Ah, but if you must hang around, I shall summarize. He makes three basic points.
First, the surface coal mining (or strip mining) is much, much cleaner these days than you think it is.
Reclamation is meticulous, so well done I don't even expect you to believe it. In a typical situation, the topsoil and a good part of the subsoil are removed from the area and stored before mining begins. Large surface rocks that are part of the natural landscape are also removed. A biological census determines the species mix for every acre of land to be mined. When mining is complete, the surface is returned to a condition as close as possible to the original contours. Streambeds are replaced layer by layer. Topsoil is restored. Those surface rocks are put back just where they were. A plant mix that hits the original species mix down to the most esoteric weed is put in place. In fact, the mining industry keeps several greenhouses in business to produce everything from twisted pinyon pine to herbs that are sacred to Hopi healers. The reclamation is, by far, the most expensive cost in surface mining. The people involved are almost to a person folks with degrees in wildlife biology, fisheries, agriculture, and related fields. These people think of themselves as environmentalists. They're good at their work. The results are nothing less than amazing.I can guarantee you, absolutely guarantee, that if I put you in a surface mining area of Wyoming or New Mexico or Arizona, you would not be able to tell me what land had been mined, and what land had not. I know you still don't believe it. But I tried.
Second, the reason the coal industry has improved so much over the last 30 years is that we made it. It was government regulation that did it. Coal companies...
... won't lift one damn finger unless we make them. Without regulation, they would backslide in a heartbeat, and without more regulation, they won't take another step.
Third, and related to the second, is that the industry still has two huge, ongoing black marks on its operations: mountaintop removal mining and old power plants. Both, crucially, have been enabled by rollbacks in the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act, for which we can thank George W. Bush.
He finishes with a rousing call to action:
First, bills will come before congress this summer to restore the Clean Air Act and the Clean Water Act to the regulations as they existed before Bush ripped out the heart of this legislation. Back the restoration of these acts. Support Julia Bond and her organization. Support Appalachian Voices. These organizations are run by people local to the area, and they have a lot of respect from the people of West Virginia - miners included. Honestly, I think restoring the Clean Air Act is a nearly impossible fight under this administration and this congress. But I think that mountaintop removal is so insanely hideous that even Republicans will feel the heat to end this practice. Shine the light on this, people. Make it a priority. We can win this one.You may find the second thing harder than the first. I want you to understand that the coal industry isn't going to go away any time soon. The United States has abundant coal reserves, and much of that coal can be mined using well understood, economical methods. Coal produces more than half the electricity in the country. I'm not asking you to stop fighting for reductions in CO2 production, or limits on pollution, or to let up on these guys one inch. Stay on top of them. Force them to adopt tougher and tougher regulations. I'll be right there with you. What has been accomplished is remarkable. I've no doubt that if we raise the bar again, they will find a way to get over it.
This is a great example of what is best about blogs: an authenticity and personal perspective that you just couldn't find anywhere else. Lots of food for thought.
Comments
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Biodiversivist Posted 12:31 pm
26 Apr 2005
Remember all that equal rights and integration crap those pathetic liberals pushed down the conservative's throats not too long ago? Well, guess what, not only are Rice and Powell black, one of them is female, and George thinks it was all his idea.
My high school sweetheart was from Kentucky. Her parents had photo albums chock full of relatives, lying in their caskets, freshly killed by mine accidents.
In the old days, miners were essentially slaves. The company housed and fed them like they would any slave. They used legal loopholes to keep it from being called slavery--the company money good only at company stores.
From Poison Darts:
The economic systems available to us fall into a spectrum. At one end, you will find unbridled capitalism and the use of slaves. The Greeks, Romans, Mayans, and most everyone else practiced this as a matter of course throughout human history. As you move toward the middle, you will find regulated free markets. This is capitalism with rules in place to limit how badly people with power can abuse those who are making them rich. Anti-trust laws break up companies that have started to swallow all competition. This does not always work. These companies resist and sometimes they succeed, as Microsoft has so far been able to do. There are laws to limit how long you can make your employees work, the conditions they work under, and laws to insure a minimum wage. Workers are called employees at this point, or sometimes wage slaves. Next on the scale comes socialism. Socialism and free market systems begin to blur as taxation and the size of government bureaucracies creep up. Finally, as taxation reaches 100 percent you have a communist system. Experience has shown that a system that sits in the middle somewhere seems to work the best.
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chris@organicmatter Posted 7:23 pm
26 Apr 2005
I hope that my promotion of his article isn't impacting his job security...
Organic Matter: Blogging the environment
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praktike Posted 12:10 am
27 Apr 2005
that's key -- there's no invisible hand when it comes to this stuff. while I think it's import that environentalists understand how economics works, you have to remember that the catalytic convertor would have sat on the shelf were it not for environmental regulations.
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jdhlax Posted 6:37 am
27 Apr 2005
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Michael Boydston Posted 1:12 pm
27 Apr 2005
Do you really mean that?
Land: I don't want to have a house built on me, but I'm nonetheless okay with building houses at least some parts of the Earth. Say, dense-development multifamily composting coops. Do you oppose any non-transient use of land by people anywhere?
Water: no use of water for anything beyond drinking? No irrigation? No water used in, for instance, the factories that make the microchips that, somewhere, are supporting this blog?
Plants: I don't want to be turned into clothing, but I'm willing to inflict that fate on cotton. If you oppose any use of anything except for eating, what do you wear?
It's good to have purists to remind us of the importance of principles, but this seems like a hard way to live. I know from your previous posts that you're a serious uncompromising deep ecologist, but do you really oppose -- in toto -- agriculture, industry, and urbanization of any kind? If so, what do you recommend we do instead?
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jdhlax Posted 6:17 pm
27 Apr 2005
Here are the ecological and environmental problems, causes, and solutions I've identified in order of ecological importance:
Problem 1. Overpopulation. There are so many people on the planet that the plants and animals do not have enough room to live in a natural, wild, healthy state. Ecosystems need large areas of wilderness in order to be healthy, with at least 50,000 acres generally being the minimum size for a viable ecosytem, not including the wildlife corridors between ecosystems so that large animals don't interbreed.
Overpopulation also exacerbates almost every other ecological and environmental problem. Some examples are pollution (the fewer people, the less pollution from the same activities, not that polluting is OK) and overconsumption (even if everyone only consumed what she needed, with far too many people humans would still grossly overconsume).
When humans lived as hunter-gatherers, there were only 10 million people on Earth. If human population is not greatly reduced, all other attempts at solving environmental problems will be like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
Cause: Overpopulation was originally caused by moving out of tropical Africa, then by discovery and use of agriculture.
Solution: While I agree with dense development as a stopgap solution, densely populated areas will become ecological sacrifice zones, so this is not a permanent solution. It now seems that where women are empowered, they choose to have 0-2 kids. (Imagine that, the vast majority of women don't want to spend their lives pregnant, in childbirth, and raising kids; can't imagine why.) So empowering women seems like the solution to overpopulation, though some sort of one-child policy might also be needed.
Problem 2. Destruction of ecosystems. Humans have destroyed the large majority of forests and grasslands, and around half of the wetlands and coral reefs, on the planet.
Cause: Destruction of ecosytems is caused both directly by overpopulation and by lack of proper respect for other life, including not acknowledging that the Earth is alive, which leads to destruction of natural areas by things like logging, mining, cattle and sheep grazing, and development. The cause of destruction of coral reefs is not clear to me, though the fishing indsutry is clearly at least partially to blame. Again, industrial fishing would not even exist if not for overpopulation.
Solution: Again, population must be greatly reduced, but humans need to respect our Mother and all life on her. If they did, they would not engage in the destructive activities listed in the preceeding paragraph, or at most in only a minimal amount of them. Ditto if humans lived as hunter-gatherers. In the meantime, we need to greatly simplify our lifestyles so that we don't consume any of the products produced by destruction of ecosystems, or at least consume as few as possible.
3. Human-caused extinctions. We are in the sixth great extinction, the first one to be caused by a species.
Cause: First, humans overhunted animals about 40,000 years ago when they moved out of Africa. Aside from overhunting, human-caused extinctions are now caused by destruction of habitat (see No. 2), pollution, and invasion of non-native species brought in by humans.
Solution: A) Stop killing of anything we don't eat; B) Stop destroying habitat for any reason; C) Get rid of all unnaturally polluting industries (beginning with the nuclear, oil, and other chemical industries); and D) stop all of this unnecessary international trade and travel that brings harmful, invasive species into habitats in which they don't belong. In our personal lives, this means not consuming stuff that comes from these activities, or at least limiting consumption as much as possible.
4. Pollution. Humans have polluted every bit of land, air, and water.
Cause: Unnatural activities, such as mining, that began long ago, but that greatly increased with the industrial revolution. Root cause is again lack of respect for the Earth and other life.
Solution: We must get over industrial society. It's not sustainable, even if you don't care about all of the other life it kills just to exist. It's time to evolove spiritually and mentally, and move past the gross materialism that's destroying all life on Earth.
Specifically regarding your questions about use of 1) Land: throwing up a few huts is one thing, but paving over the earth with concrete foundations is unacceptable. Overpopulation is also a problem here, as a much lower population would not destroy anywhere near as much land; 2) Water: if we lived as hunter-gatherers and got rid of industrial society, we would not use water for any of these purposes; and 3) Plants: the reason people need clothing is that they were meant to live in the tropics (i.e., no fur). Wearing skins of animals used for food is fine, but cotton requires agriculture and much water, and is a relatively very environmentally destructive crop.
Sorry this is such a long post, but it's the only way I could really answer your questions, which were totally legitimate. I've thought about this stuff for years, and these are the conclusions I've come to. I empathize with all life and know that everything is alive, so that I see clearly that the human race fits the medical definition of being a cancerous tumor on the planet (i.e., an out-of-control growth that consumes the host), as a medical doctor once told me. The solutions I've outlined would change that horrible situation.
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Michael Boydston Posted 10:13 am
28 Apr 2005
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