Kayford Mountain, WV, News
Larry Gibson is a “CNN Hero”
Sunday, November 18th, 2007
August 15, 2007
A True Hero: 22 years and going strong!
CNN Heroes debuted the story “Larry Gibson: Defending the Planet” on Tuesday, 8/14, during Anderson Cooper 360. It will also be aired this Thurs 8/16 and Sun 8/19 all day ON CNN & CNN HEADLINE NEWS. (2 separate channels). An extended version will be available on the CNN Hero’s website next week.
For more than 200 years, Larry Gibson’s ancestors have lived on Kayford Mountain in the Appalachians of West Virginia. Today, he is fighting to protect his coal-rich land from mountaintop blasting and the consequences he fears it would have for the environment.
Donate to the Keeper of the Mountains Foundation by visiting www.mountainkeeper.org
August 16th, 2007 at 12:48 pm
I grew up in this area and I am disgusted by what is happening to it. I no longer live there, but remember it fondly. What a gorgeous area to level! I am so proud of the stand Larry Gibson is taking and I support him in these efforts. I will write to Congress and I will donate to this cause. I cannot bear to see such a utter disregard for our national treasures.
August 17th, 2007 at 9:03 pm
What powers your house? it is coal if you are so serious about what you belive in call the power company and tell them to cut your power off. Why would you want to use more power shut down the web sites cut off your power and go back to living in the 1940s. You don’t tell about all the good things that coal brings i can take any body not from around here tell them that you are a bunch of nazis and they would belive it. You continue to do what you think is right and so will I blowing off the tops of mountains providing for my kids and suppling energy for the nation.
August 27th, 2007 at 11:12 pm
Dear Wallace,
I can appreciate that you work hard for a living, but I’ve been to southern West Virginia enough times, and been to enough sites, and met enough good people to know that you are not seeing the big picture, or any picture not drawn by your employer. If it’s all about jobs, why are only about 15,000 miners employed in West Virginia today, compared to over 110,000 in 1960? If MTR is all about energy, please tell me how much energy is during the entire MTR process, from the fuel for the machines to level the forest, to pushing trees and “overburden” (a coal company bullshit name for the soil that nourishes our planet), over the hillside, to the fuel to make the explosives (that are damaging your own health), to all the vehicles used in the process, to hauling the coal away (including shipping it overseas for goodness sake!),compared to the energy derived from the coal? Tell me how many board feet of lumber are pushed illegally over the hillsides, and how many millions more board feet will never grow where MTR is committed? Timber is a renewable resource. Coal does its dirty job, and it’s gone, just like the mountains.
You can have mountains AND energy, too. Look at the top of th emountain on U.S. 219 in tucker County. It has forests; it has life; and guess what? It produces wind energy! If you don’t like the look of wind turbines on a mountain, you must really hate what MTR does!
If better energy technology comes along, then you can take down the turbines, and presto, you have a beautiful mountain again.
Miners can still continue their legacy and tradition of producing energy, but it can be clean energy, that doesn’t destroy soil, forests, mountains, streams, human health, and spirit and culture.
The only “nazis” are the career criminals in the Bush Administration and the the offenders like the big criminal living on the hill near Williamson, who support or practice terrorism on their own people and land, so that someone can make a pile of money the size of Bolt Mountain, and let thousands of innocent people bear the costs.
Wallace, you are a pawn of the big coal companies. They are filling your lungs with rock dust, and your head with propaganda. They are using you to help polarize your own people, so they can steal your underwear while you’re sleeping.
Do you hunt? Do you know that MTR employees are burying bear cubs and sows in their dens when they knock over the forest and shove it over the hill? Do you really expect anyone to believe that mountaintop removal is good for deer hunting? Nothing is there to support the deer! Where is the ginseng after the land is raped? Where are the trees?
MTR is akin to cutting off one of your legs so you can get one more bite to eat, when a banquet of healthy food lies right around the corner.
If you can do what you do without a blink of a feeling, Massey or some other outfit must have brought you in from somewhere else to do their dirty work. It’s pretty sorry stuff!
Some day, you’ll change your mind, but first you need to open it, and the sooner, the better, for you and everyone else.
Thank you.
Mark
October 8th, 2007 at 2:16 pm
Larry Gibson showed me his mountain and the moonscape that surrounded it. That moonscape was created by greedy coal companies for whom profit comes first and respect for nature and the environment that we all live in comes last. Gibson’s commitment to our planet as exemplified in his commitment to Kayford Mt. sustains me as I try to clean up my part of the planet–a coal-burning power plant in my neighborhood in Salem, Massachusetts. Larry is a true hero!
October 19th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
Dear Larry Mullins: If you think that coal mining of any sort, especially MTR, is going to benefit your children, my friend, guess again. The environmental destruction of coal mining leaves behind poisoned water and dead forest in the mining areas, and burning coal for power kills people with poisoned air. You are not doing any good for your children — in fact, you are setting them up to die a horrible death, from poisoned air and water. We don’t need more coal. With wind, solar and conservation we can get off of coal for good. Let it sit in the ground where God put it.
October 21st, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Dear Mr. Gibson,
God Bless you. You are a hero. Our world needs more like you. My son wants to spread the word at his school. He’s working on doing a presentation.
My husband is planning a trip to Corbin, Kentucky. His father is buried there. On the side of a mountain. According to Google Earth just North and South is due to have mtr done.
This is appalling. Any excuses that are made are pathetic at best. We need to make a difference. You are an inspiration. A role to show that even one can take a stand for what is right and for what is believed.
Again, Bless you.
Charity
September 1st, 2011 at 2:36 pm
Nicely “polarized” arguments here, but “something new” seems to be “coming down the pike. (Literally!)
I recently read James Billmaier’s story urging VERY
rapid acceptance of the Electric Vehicle here in the USA.
He paints a very rosy picture of the great benifits that will come to US citizens, after we crush or shred all of our gas-guzzling personal transportation; but if the nice people who expend amunition to keep Larry Gibson’s “home
place” easy to “Air Condition” in the summer months
continueto do their MTR “thang:” I have a suspicion just where thelow-sulfer coal needed to keep the power industry turning will be mined.
It’s like “they say;” “The very BEST soup will often have a buxom black fly floating about in it.”
Hang tough, Mr. Gibson. It’s hard to say just where this land would be, without those who are willing to stand their ground and point out the abuses “offered gratis” by
those who know that “Power exists only to be used.”
Or would that be “AB-used?”
July 22nd, 2012 at 9:38 am
I was on kayford this weekend, what a beautiful place.this is Gods work and so is larry gibson.stand firm my friend!