Replies: 0 (jump to last) Started by Frank J. Regan on 06/01/09 1:28pm
As we turn on our lights, run our air conditioners, and charge our gadgets we do so mostly by burning coal. Coal pollutes and adds dramatically to manmade global warming.
“The U.S. consumes about 100 quadrillion BTUs of thermal energy per year. Electricity generation accounts for about 40 percent of this. Currently we meet this demand with coal (49 percent), natural gas (21 percent), and uranium (20 percent). Hydro provides 5 percent, and all renewables together only 2.5 percent.” â€"from Our Energy Futureâ€"The Answer is Not Blowing in the Wind [http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=665]
So, when we decide not to conserve electricity or not to allow a renewable energy source near our homes, we condemn many to the hazards of mountain top removalâ€"not to mention a world that will incur serious climate disruptions.
If we refuse to address this aspect of the energy equation, the moral issue, that wind turbine may not land in our backyard, but that blasted mountain top, whose tailings will pollute far-off streams, will be in someone else’s backyard.
Will we be like Harold Skimpole of Charles Dicken’s Bleak House? Harold continually states that he’s “just a child” in human affairs while he sponges off the wealthy and refuses to acknowledge the moral responsibilities of his actions. Our dysfunctional media allows many the illusion that energy production is merely an economical and political matter, when in truth that what lies behind the flip of that light switch in our homes permeates throughout the planet and affects everyone everywhere on it. Morally, we all live in the coal fields because we use the power of coal when have other choices that allow a better energy source to fuel our lives. Check out this interview:
"We All Live in the Coal Fields": West Virginians Step Up Protests as EPA OKs New Mountaintop Removal At least thirty people were arrested in West Virginia Saturday as protesters marked a new phase of Operation Appalachian Spring, a campaign to end mountaintop removal mining. The protests came just a week after the Obama administration gave the green light for forty-two more mountaintop removal permits in a major victory for the coal industry. We speak to journalist Jeff Biggers, author of the book United States of Appalachia: How Southern Mountaineers Brought Independence, Culture and Enlightenment to America. Biggers says mountaintop removal is a national issue, not a local one, as many perceive." (May 29, 09) Democracy Now! | Radio and TV News [http://www.democracynow.org/2009/5/29/coal]
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