Coal Companies Blowing up Mountains to Poison Air and Shatter Climate

The first thing I saw this morning was the news that Al Gore is running for President, and AmericasCoalPower.org, hilariously mocking Americans for Balanced Energy Choices (ABEC), a coal industry front-group currently spending $35 million to convince the Democratic candidates that there such a thing as "clean coal."

I wanted in on the outrageous humor.
And perhaps, as a testament to my lack of creativity or
consistent over-reliance on images, all I could think of was that we have reached a point in our history when we are letting coal companies BLOW UP OUR MOUNTAINS  so that they can extract a substance with which they will poison the air, pollute our water, and change the F#$%^ing CLIMATE!?!

Taking the entire mountain off the coal using mountaintop removal coal-mining, 100s of feet of rubble are shoved into our headwater streams...

100s of vertical feet of the oldest mountains on the continent (some say the world) are blasted away for thin coal seams...

1 million+ acres of the most biodiverse forest in the world outside of the tropics have been blasted away, with more to come...

A single mountaintop removal site, the Hobet complex, is the size of Long Island.

Are you f@#$%ing kidding me?
The people in Appalachia have to live like this?

...

Now, if coal were edible, or if it was being mined to cure cancer, mountaintop removal MIGHT be justified.

But, coal is being used to literally poison our air, with direct and devastating impacts on human health, increased medicare costs, tourism in our national parks. Coal emissions are literally killing people, and de-stabalizing climactic patterns to the point that we are potentially endangering the ability of the human species to persist on Planet Earth.

Now...in danger of sounding like a sourpuss on an otherwise sunny day, I am pleased to announce that the wonderful people of Appalachia, never known to take it lying down, are organizing, and standing up to powerful coal interests to protect their homes from mountaintop removal. The Clean Water Protection Act (HR 2169) has 129 co-sponsors in the House, and Presidential candidates (all 3) are talking (though imperfectly) about addressing mountaintop removal.  

Carbon emission and other GHG's are throwing off the entire climactic patterns of our planet.

...

Kossacks Like A_Siegel, va_dare, emmasnacker, DevilsTower, Jerome_A_Paris, Meteor_Blades, and MANY others are building the movement to bring about sustainable green jobs and a new clean energy economy to Appalachia and to our country.

Al Gore has started a $300 million project focused on making climate change an "actionable" issue.

Wind has become cost competitive with coal for power generation.

Use of solar, tidal, biomass, and other forms of green energy are increasing. Our capacity and ability to use conservation and efficiency measures is improving. Awareness of the severe problem of coal the carbon cycle is increasing.

We can do much much better than we are doing.

And I hope in 100 years, when all our coal is gone, we look back at our idiotic use of coal for energy and say to ourselves...

"Were we Joking?"