No one who supports coal should call themselves environmentalist, nor friends of the human race. This particular group should also rename themselves "Enemies of the Columbia Gorge".

No one who supports coal should call themselves environmentalist, nor friends of the human race.

Yes. That's always been my bedrock objection to CCS.

JMG, I like your take on America's faith-based pseudo-market fundamentalism. We see it everywhere today in economic, energy, and environmental policy. Reality becomes less tenable for them by the day, and they must burrow further and further into their toxic delusions.

It won't do any good. Reality is digging for us.

Worse, "environmentalists" have become the lead enablers for Boardman, hoping that dancing the "be reasonable" dance deftly enough will persuade the plant's owner to make a few healing chants over the plant, even as it gets ready for another fifty years of destroying the earth.

By coincidence, just this morning I started reading a book which has been on my shelf for awhile, Green Rage by Christopher Manes, on the rise of Earth first and the radical environmentalists, in large part against the lukewarm, "reasonable", reformist movement.

I guess they would say just because you reject the collaborationist crew doesn't mean you need to dump the term "environmentalist" altogether.

Then again, I don't know if radical environmentalism even exists anymore. The last time I checked out the Earth First website it just had news links and stuff about gatherings from years ago - no new content at all. So maybe the movement is moribund.

Versus combustionists.

Burn life down, or build it up?  It's a clear choice.

Guzzle the planet into internal combustion machinery, or live as part of the whole.  See, there is no real choice.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

I like the term tree hugger. It just sounds warm and fuzzy and that is what corporate throws around when they want to belittle you or your cause. Enviormentalist are coined as wine sipping elitist who bewail the destruction of the planet just to appear fashionable and are not to be taken seriously.

We need to all buy a copy of the redneck dictionary in order to communicate our concerns to Joe Six Pack.

I kinda like Corona Light, might be able to go all the way and drink a long neck bud.

Hey! its an acquired taste..

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

Or aerobic symbiosists.  When you tour the "timberlands" (as you prefer the product based nomenclature) do you walk or ride in your gas guzzler?

You ride with your chainsaw, and are proud of that.  You enjoy the fact that it annoys us.

You ride in your steel wheelchair in fear of "snags".  Ent-like, snags have lashed out and tagged you before.

A day without fire is like a day without sunshine, right?  Hehehey.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Backcut,

If I am only left a tree to hug. Mountain Top Removal has reduced me down to hugging the weeds that grow back on ruined deciduous forest of Southern Appalachia.

When a mountain is blasted away and pushed over into a valley by a coal corporation they strike it off flat and spray a weed seed mixture on it and call it reclaimation.

Its enough to make one drink something and like the song said " they fill their cup with whatever strong brew they are drinking and they dig coal from the bottom of their grave"

From the song, You'll Never Leave Harlan Alive

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

Simply Amazing:

"is it hard for thee to kick against the pricks" we have no snags, not even the semblance of a forest.

Nitrates by the millions of tons and caterpillar makes a larger footprint on the land than steel wheel chairs.

It is a hard thing to save a forest when even the foundation of it is destroyed. The chainsaw has been silenced in Appalachia except for the clear cutting that ushers in the nitrates before the caterpillar's attack.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

assume that "environmentalists", whatever that is, are wrong about forests.  If that was the only problem, then we would be justified in damning all environmentalists.  But there is much more to the biosphere than forests, even if we assume that forests are the single most important feature -- well, call it number two, after the basic design of the climate, so you can see where I'm going with this, we have several disasters that we're trying to do something about at the same time.  

If you look at my most recent posts I go into some detail concerning where greenhouse gas emissions come from, and forests are definitely one of the big ones -- and even if the forests were saved and immaculte accroding to your prescriptions, we'd still be in big doo-doo from climate change, the state of the oceans, the nonforest soils, etc etc, not to mention what will happen when humans freak out when fossil fuels disappear.  so I ask you to consider several different problems when you engage in blanket condemnations (as I ask others to do the same).

As for "environmentalist", I guess I always call myself a "progressive", or even when I'm being indiscrete, a "leftist" or "radical", words which I hope have some positive connotations.  In other words, I think it's important to combine environmental concerns with other concerns, economic, political and social.

Jon,

   You are totally correct about forest and I know we can do without them. The forest of England and Europe have been cut for century's.  In the time before coal large parts of the American forest were cut down. It is a fact the planet will survive without forest. Well not a total fact yet because we still have had large plots of forest elsewhere to act as the lungs of the planet we may have just not reached the tipping point yet. We will have to wait until we finish off the Amazon and Russia cuts down the great forests of eastern Europe and Siberia.
   I love my forest and being genetically disposed to living in a valley snuggled in between two mountains "actually one and a half now" I will selfishly adhere to the we need to save the forest theory. We will go our separate ways and one throw the other under the bus for co2 while the other has forest tunnel vision and yet another undercuts the so called environmentalist who is fighting for clean water.
   If you ever find out what an environmentalist is and find two or three that work together let us know.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.

With all due respect, JMG is misrepresenting Friends of the Columbia Gorge's call to clean up or close the Boardman plant.  Along with our allies at Sierra Club, Northwest Environmental Advocacy Center, Columbia Riverkeeper, Hells Canyon Preservation Council and Pacific Environmental Advocacy Center,  we have lead the way to require clean up or closure of this aging dirty coal plant by filing suit against PGE for violations of the Clean Air Act and by organizing public involvement in the draft regional haze rule that is currently under consideration by the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and the Environmental Quality Commission.   Unfortunately, by law the regional haze rule does not address carbon emissions, only haze causing pollutants listed in the Clean Air Act.

The goal of the regional haze rule is to achieve natural levels of visibility in Class I airsheds by the years 2064.  Not a loftly goal, but better than nothing.  States are required to adopt a regional haze rule in order to comply with amendments to the Clean Air Act that were passed in the 1990s.  Existing industrial sources of air pollution that impact visibility in our Class I airsheds (wilderness areas and national parks) are required to implement the best available retrofitting technology (BART) in order to clear the air in Class I airsheds.  The current rulemaking will determine the what pollution control devices must be installed at the aging plant, not whether it should be closed because of the tremendous amount of greenhouse gasses coming out of its stack. Nevertheless, our coalition is seeking the stringent measures and an aggressive timeline to clean up air pollution from the PGE Boardman power plant or closure of the plant and replacement with cleaner energy sources.

We forgive JMG for the misrepresentations.  Our public outreach efforts have obviously motivated people like JMG to get involved and to advocate for closure of this aging polluter.  Thank you to JMG for getting involved and writing a great letter to the DEQ!  
 

That is probably Western Coal they are using you know the coal the Eastern Coal Corporations have to destroy mountains, valleys and fresh water streams in order to stay competitive with.

The eons of time and nature was good to us down here. It was not until we become civilized that destroying our habitat become fathomable or fashionable.