I suppose I should have something to say about the Bush administration's latest effort to encourage mountaintop removal mining. But what? It's not like there's any particular analytical insight required. The Bushies are choosing profit for coal companies over some of America's most beautiful landscapes and oldest cultures. It's right there in the open.
What's required in situations like this is not analysis but brute power politics. The administration makes it clear that they don't give much of a damn about feedback:
The Office of Surface Mining in the Interior Department drafted the rule, which will be subject to a 60-day comment period and could be revised, although officials indicated that it was not likely to be changed substantially.
Hear that? It won't be changed, no matter what you punks say.
But that's just puffery, predicated on the expectation that there won't be any outcry, or that the outcry will be confined to the usual suspects -- a packet of postcards from the Sierra Club, etc.
That prediction, I'm sad to say, is probably a safe one. A widespread, coordinated protest by a broad swath of Americans could prevent this, but I doubt such protest will be forthcoming.
After all, this kind of mining has been going on in obvious contravention of the law for years now, and there's been little protest. Why would we expect protest now that the Bushies are changing the law to make it legal?
Another coal plant bites the dust
Blowing up our clean energy future
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JMG Posted 4:04 am
24 Aug 2007
Even the theft of Florida would not have let the Supremes install Boy George had West Virginia voted its real interests rather than that of the coal companies.
This recent, excellent series on MTR has reminded me of just how brutal karma can be.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Solar John Posted 4:38 am
24 Aug 2007
Excess Spoil, Coal Mine Waste, and Buffers for Waters of the United States--Proposed rule. [30 CFR Parts 780, 784, 816, and 817]
http://a257.g.akamaitech.net/7/257/2422/01jan20071800/edo ...
In the event you DO want to respond, here's how:
People have 60 days to submit comments on the proposed rule by mail or courier to the Office of Surface Mining Reclamation and Enforcement, Administrative Record, Room 252-SIB, 1951 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, D.C. 20240, or by Internet through the Federal e-Rulemaking Portal: http://www.regulations.gov. Please identify the comments by including docket number 1029-AC04 in the subject line.
Solar John
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Delay And Deny Posted 4:49 am
24 Aug 2007
You act as if mountains were landscaped by designer architects.
They're the product of tumultuous crustal activity and volcanism as well as possibly subterranean gas build up.
Plowing a mountain on the earth is like pricking a pimple on one's face.
John Bailo
Sutext:
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Solar John Posted 4:58 am
24 Aug 2007
Strip mining has buried hundreds of miles of streambeds in Appalachia in the last 20 years.
Rather, one big problem environmentalists have with the proposed change is that it would end their chance of getting a court order for OSM to enforce the stream-protection rule to their liking, or of some future administration requiring tougher enforcement.
"If we don't have that law, we're up a buried creek," said Vivian Stockman of the Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition, which has fought to limit mountaintop mining.
Surface mining leaves behind huge amounts of rock and dirt that have to be put somewhere. Ending or reducing exemptions from the stream buffer rule would limit -- perhaps even cripple -- mining by making more areas off-limits.
"They know that this is a threat to the coal industry," Lovett said, so the administration wants to change the rule before President Bush leaves office.
Solar John
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Solar John Posted 5:03 am
24 Aug 2007
Tell that to the victims of a sludge impoundment failure who lost their lives, or to the people whose drinking water has been ruined, or to the little boy who was killed in his bed when a rock from blasting crashed through his roof, etc. etc. etc.
Solar John
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