Saturday, May 13, 2006

The Rape of Appalachia

I know many local activists are aware of the problem of mountaintop removal since the practice is responsible for destroying land right here in Tennessee, but in case you missed it, the topic was featured in an article in May's special Green Issue of Vanity Fair. It's a good read, very thorough, and casts a much-needed national spotlight on a horrible method of retrieving coal from what used to be beautiful mountains (image via the Sierra Club).

UPDATE: more images and info here (thanks to stelmodad for the link!).

5 comments:

Frank S. said...

I would suggest you also check out the link below for an article about the making of a documentary film called "Black Diamonds". It deals with the process and effects of strip mining.



http://www.citypaper.com/news/story.asp?id=11640

alice said...

Great! Thanks for the link!

stelmodad said...

http://southwings.org/ trys to use flights to show sights like this to lawmakers.

alice said...

Nice! Thanks for the link!

chad edwards said...

I'm glad this issue is finally getting some attention.



A person doesn't even have to be entirely against coal to be against this horror show. MTR exists for one reason- to extract massive amounts of coal without having to resort to hiring a whole bunch of union coal miners. Saves coal execs millions and to hell with the rest of us.