elway777 wrote:
"Personally I do not want to pay a lot more for clean energy"
No one does, and that's part of the problem. It's made it very painful to switch to cleaner alternatives. Americans have been getting their evergy for cheap for so long because someone else is paying the true cost.
Are you willing to drink poisoned water if it means your energy bill is smaller? Or to let your children drink poisioned water? Or is it only okay if it's someone else's children? At what point do we decide that cheap energy is actually far too expensive?
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ENVIRONMENT
‘Slaves to Industry’
In the middle of coal-producing Appalachia, the daughter of a miner is standing up for the environment.
crmw.net
Bond (center) took center stage at an anti-coal rally
Apr 21, 2009
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The coal belt of Appalachia isn't exactly fertile ground for environmentalism. Mountaintop mining is big business in states like West Virginia and Kentucky, where companies dig up more than 1 billion tons of the fuel each year. It's a process that pumps lots of money into the economy by way of the large number of people who work for the industry. But further down the line, the process isn't as lucrative. Particulate matter, which is a byproduct of the mining process, can often end up in the air and groundwater, according to Environmental Protection Agency monitoring.
Former U.S. Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill famously stated that all politics is local. In many cases, the same is true for environmentalism—a reality that puts coal-mining communities in a tight spot. In pursuit of clean air and clean water, how does a community transition away froman industry that employs many of its residents and drives the local economy?
Part of the answer lies with people like Julia Bonds, the daughter, granddaughter, sister and ex-wife of Appalachian coal miners. Despite her pedigree, she is codirector of the watchdog group Coal River Mountain Watch, which pushes for an end to mountaintop mining and an investment in renewable energy to power local communities. Her family understands why she speaks out, but finds it hard to support the cause, primarily because the coal industry is the only job in town, a problem she refers to as the "mono-economy" created by the state. Bonds, who lives in Boone County, W.Va., calls her region the epicenter of coal's effects on human health.But she says it's also the site of a budding environmental movement. Bonds spoke with NEWSWEEK's Daniel Stone. Excerpts:
NEWSWEEK: You're an environmental activist in the coal belt of Appalachia. How did you find that job listing?
Bonds: It didn't take much more than a couple summers full of bad air and bad water experiences. I remember seeing my grandson standing in a stream full of dead fish. Then black water started running down the river. I knew that [the coal miners] were poisoning the towns around me. I was witnessing with my own eyes the state of our children's future.
It seems contradictory to advocate for the environment when the livelihood of your family history is intertwined with this industry.
The people in my family were mountaineers before they were coal miners. We have been managers of the land for centuries. In the mountains here, God gave us everything we need. It wasn't until the rest of the country realized that there was coal in them there hills that they came and stole and conned our ancestors out of the land. That made us homogenized people rather than the self-reliant people we were. The Industrial Revolution turned us into slaves to the industrial world.
In a community like yours, people have shaped their lives around this industry. It powers the local economy. How can you ask people to boycott and turn their backs on it?
I tell them that it's not OK to blast and poison your neighbors and your own children to make a living. There's a better way. We're pushing renewable-energy jobs that last forever and don't involve blasting your neighbors.
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