Disclaimer: I am guilty. Every watt powering this laptop, writing this blog and the music, sometimes Rachel Maddow segments, playing may have come from coal, or nuclear, or methane. Not sure exactly, but more to the point, it's not like I generated my own clean, sustainable power for this laptop. And because of that, I am guilty of using coal as well. Conscious of it? But being conscious of my role in creating a problem is not the same as being pro-active in stopping it.
The transition away from coal will be long and hard, but it'll be made all the worse if we do not start immediately. Long and hard is better than agonizingly slow and painfully hard.
Much like how the coal industry violently repressed workers calls for living wages, and not quite as dangerous working conditions in eras past, and now. The wealthy heads of these coal companies have found a new enemy: those that speak the truth about the foul black rocks from the bowels of the Earth. It's not the CEO's fault coal is dirty, but they are are at fault for profiting from it.
So long as people make money from destruction of planet, MTR, climate change, coal ash spills, and populace, billions in health care costs, lives lost from mining accidents, we must all ask, when will it stop? When will society break free from as David Roberts of Grist.org put it, "the enemy of the human race."??
Recent news: two people I know from Lancaster, far from West Virginia, have been arrested for minor civil disobedience, with no destruction of property much less peoples livelihoods, and are being held with $100,000 bail! One of the charges is "littering" Littering?! I don't condone littering, but how is it these coal companies get away with destroying mountains legally? A piece of paper or empty plastic bottle can be picked up and thrown into a recycling bin, or such, but a mountain top can never truly be restored. Reshaping and planting some pine trees is not restoration.
Once humanity stops dealing with our enemies, the dinosaur energy sources of oil, coal and natural gas, and start resorting to friends, the earth, (geothermal) sun, moon (tidal energy) and wind, a better, healthier future will be in our hands. Time, sacrifice, and effort will have to be made, but the end result will at least last us a lot longer, and not destroy the environment we depend on.
The issues with coal are not only seen in scientific graph charts and tables in books and presentations done by people with PHDs at Universities. It is seen in our health care bills from bad air, soil and water. It is seen in West Virgina, and other places in America where the sounds of nature are drowned out by explosives destroying nature in the name of cheap electricity.
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