It's 10am, do you know where your electricity has been? Does your provider buy electricity from power plants using coal sourced from mountain top removal, MTR, operations. Coal is bad enough on it's own merits as a climate destroying fossil fuel but the "ecocide" of mountaintop removal is completely out of bounds even when measured against other rapacious corporate behaviour that has become so common in the last decade.
Contact your utility and demand that they stop selling power from power plants using coal sourced from MTR operations. Some universities have already done so, if I'm not mistaken North Carolina has pursued banning the practice but many of it's citizens still purchase MTR electricity. This Sierra Club blog has posted an estimate of 44% of coal burned in North Carolina comes from MTR operations. So while the state protects it's own mountains and communities it is willing to run roughshod over the mountain communities in Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Virginia. This practice has devastated these communities. Read more about the poverty and sickness that follows MTR operations at Coal Isn't Clean If You Live There over on Celsias
Ultimately it's about an insatiable demand for something that once was and properly should be considered a luxury, something that can be produced clean and free from the sun and wind. Does it make more sense to invest in a new home entertainment system or a solar PV electricity system. Is the convenience of a clothes dryer in the sunny south worth sacrificing our natural heritage, a healthy ecosystem, our neighbors well being, and a stable climate on this planet for.
Contact the EPA and let them know you want this practice stopped, work with any number of groups fighting the Bush Adminstration and it's corporate owners over MTR, here's one to start with, the Petition Site, and as always reduce, reduce, reduce your demand.
Thanks to the Appalachian Regional Commission for the graphic at the top of this post.
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