News
This Little (Coal-Fired) Light of Mine: Will President Heed 45 Million Prayers?
Tuesday, August 4th, 2009
(Great story, originally posted by our friend Jeff Biggers at Huffington Post. Thanks Jeff!)
As the brilliant lights of the White House shine across Pennsylvania Avenue Monday evening, generated by a coal-fired plant that uses coal stripmined from devastating mountaintop removal operations in Appalachia, religious leaders and organizations representing over 45 million Americans from across the country will hold a special candlelight prayer vigil at 7pm in Lafayette Park.
“The purpose of the rally is to remember the nearly 500 mountains already destroyed by mountaintop removal mining,” according to Jordan Blevins, Assistant Director of the National Council of Church’s Eco-Justice Office, and the sponsor of the event, “and to have people of faith call upon the federal government to end this destructive practice.”
This little coal-fired light of mine: Will President Barack Obama be listening to these prayers to end a mining practice that detonates millions of pounds of ammonium nitrate/fuel oil explosives every day in the Appalachian coalfields in order to scoop up only 5-7 percent of our national coal production?
The National Council of Churches is the ecumenical voice of America’s Orthodox, Protestant, Anglican, historic African American and traditional peace churches, and represents over 45 million Americans in 100,000 congregations across the country. For more information on today’s event, visit their Eco-Justice site.
August 3rd should be a national day of atonement for our sins against the American mountains and mountaineers.
Today marks the 32nd anniversary of the signing of the Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act in 1977, which President Jimmy Carter called “a disappointing effort” and a “watered down” bill, and unleashed one of the most egregious environmental violations in our nation’s history. Carter’s main concern with SMCRA’s loopholes dealt with the atrocious political compromise engineered by Big Coal sycophants in Congress, which effectively granted federal recognition of mountaintop removal. Nearly four decades later, over 1.2 million acres of hardwood deciduous forests in our nation’s carbon sink have been wiped, historic communities have been depopulated and left in ruin, and over 1,2o0 miles of waterways have been jammed with mining waste.
For more history on Carter, SMCRA and the last 38 years of regulatory machinations and mountaintop removal mayhem, go here and here.
Religious leaders and ecumenical organizations have been outspoken on mountaintop removal destruction for years.
Over the past decade, six major denominations have issued anti-mountaintop removal resolutions of faith, stating that “the sanctity and sacredness of human life and the natural environment should not be destroyed in the name of corporate profit,” and “mountaintop removal coal mining is devastating the environment, economies, people, and culture in Appalachia.” Similar resolutions have been passed by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Episcopal Church, the United Methodist Church, the Unitarian Universalist Association, and the Religious Society of Friends.
The Presbyterian Church of the United States declared:
WHEREAS, mountaintop removal coal mining destroys both the beauty and productive capacity of the land thus eliminating future or alternative economic opportunities for the families of Appalachia WHEREAS, God instructs us to “not defile the land where you live and where I dwell” (Numbers 35:34) […]It is resolved that the 217th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church USA, urges state and federal agencies that regulate mining practices, as well as coal companies themselves, to abandon the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining and work to meet our nation’s energy needs in a manner that is just, sustainable and consistent with Christian values.
Click here for more information on the resolutions
Last spring, the West Virginia Council of Churches published a book of personal narratives about the human costs and human rights violations of mountaintop removal on coalfields residents. The booklet, Mountain Tops Do Not Grow Back, Stories of Living in the Midst of Mountain Top Removal Strip Mining, can be read here.
Two years ago, the Catholic Committee of Appalachia and the Kentuckians for the Commonwealth sponsored a tour of mountaintop removal sites for several national evangelical leaders in the United States, and announced their intent to “pledge voice and vote against mountaintop removal. Our voices will retell the testimony we have heard and the destruction we have seen through our sermons, writings, and conversations.” More information on the tour can be found here.
In 2004, Catholic Bishop Emeritus Walter Sullivan from Richmond, Virginia, the corporate home of mountaintop removal giant Massey Energy, toured the coalfields and released a statement:
The Church needs to stand with those who live lives of hopelessness and helplessness. The mountain culture and its way life are being destroyed. Thankfully, the Catholic Committee of Appalachia (CCA), under the direction of Sister Robbie Pentecost and the many Church workers in the area, are willing to stand up and be counted. “Mountain top removal” is just another example of profit taking preference over the lives of people, where the powerful wage a different kind of war against the powerless.
The Christians for the Mountains (CFTM) organization was founded a few years ago as a a “network of persons committed to advocating that Christians and their churches recognize their God-given responsibility to live compatibly and sustainably upon this earth God has created.” CFTM has been active in organizing in events and campaigns in the coalfield region.
Here’s a clip from the Christians for the Mountains role in “Mountain Mourning,” in the Mountains Don’t Grow Back film documentary by B. J. Gudmundsson:
August 5th, 2009 at 12:20 am
In response to that clip on mountaintop removal. I think we should take a long look at ourselves. How can good christian people ask our goverment to put all those families out of work? Folks people need jobs to pay the bills, taxes for our roads and our schools, or is that what the lottery is for? I would like to think you for your time and also thank you for looking at both sides of the story. I don’t want to see our mountains disappear, but I don’t want to see our mountain people disappear to other places for work either.
August 13th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Think about what you just said… If there are no mountains on which they may live, how can there continue to be ‘mountain people’?
August 13th, 2009 at 11:24 am
We need to let go of this “debate” of jobs vs. the environment, humans vs. the rest of life on the planet, so that we can move forward together realizing that there IS no conflict, just the need for a new way of doing things.
Look at the current politics around climate change legislation – I remember President Bush refusing to ratify the Kyoto Protocol because he said it would be bad for the US economy. I said, well, YES! Of course it will be bad for this economy, because we need a new economy! We need to create new/old sustainable energy, sustainable agriculture, sustainable communities. We need to create new green jobs – alternatives to jobs that are destroying not only the earth but our health, and stealing future quality of life from our children.
Saving the mountains IS saving the people who live in these mountains – if we have the political will and collective vision to make a new green economy work for all of us.
August 13th, 2009 at 11:43 am
There would be many more people with jobs if that coal was mined by customary deep-shaft mine methods. The profits from MTR mining goes to the coal mining executives – who save labor costs and leave the environmental costs to the mountain people!
August 13th, 2009 at 1:10 pm
It doesn’t take very many workers to destroy mountains. Most of the work is done by machines, so it wouldn’t put many people out of jobs, to save our remaining mountains.
Talk to the workers and families or read what they say. You will find that the loss of their mountains is grievous, much more than losing a job might be.
August 13th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
Thank you for making the film . It is very strong and I hope it will get the attention of alot of people who have not paid attention to this enviromental horror and they will join in to help preserve the mountains and the people who have lived there for generations.
August 13th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
God bless our brothers and sisters who toil for environmental justice in Appalachia. –your brothers and sisters of the Ozarks
August 13th, 2009 at 6:01 pm
The people who do mountain-top removal mining will put other people out of work, and condemn their own children to an uncertain future. Why? Because one of the few other industries West Virginia has is the tourist industry; people go there to hike, to watch birds, to do white-water rafting, to ski, and to enjoy the mountain scenery. When enough mountains are torn down, the tourists will NOT come back. They can’t ski on mounds of rubble or raft on filled-in streams. So those tourist-industry jobs will be gone forever. What’s especially sad is that, right now, people from overcrowded East Coast cities, especially Washington and Baltimore, are getting interested in moving to W. Va., either as summer residents or year-round residents. Tax dollars and business investment will follow. Will anyone move to a state with a devastated landscape and poisoned streams, and with all the other problems that mountain top removal leaves behind? Absolutely not–I promise you that.
And I’m sure I don’t need to remind you of what happens when the last conveniently extractable coal runs out.
Mountain top removal mining absolutely guarantees that there will not be jobs, or a future, for West Virginia or the other parts of Appalachia, where mountains are destroyed to mine coal. A few paychecks today will mean that there will be no work in the mountains for your children tomorrow. They will have to leave to survive.
August 15th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Mountain top removal is a crime against man and nature.
I live in an area of great beauty, forests and rivers.
There is nothing that can replace a mountain and its
ecosystem. God must be weeping. Please write and try to
force our President, Senators, Congressmen to stop this
atrocity. No point in writing our Politicos in West Virginia. They are everyone bought and paid for by King Coal
Katheryne Hoffman, Ansted Historic Preservation Council
August 16th, 2009 at 1:50 pm
The saddest thing about mountaintop removal mining is the brainwashing that has occurred. Instead of West Virginins collectively being opposed to this hideous practice, they have been brainwashed to believe that mountain top removal must continue for the sake of jobs. Wake up people – if the coal companies were interested in jobs, they would be mining the traditional underground way and not eliminating 100 employees per large mining machine!!!