The real cost of coal mining

Here is a link to a story that talks about the impact that coal mining has on our natural resources. http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200811/coal.asp
Decades of coal mining have poured sediment and untold billions of gallons of pollutants into Fishtrap Lake and its environs. Starting in the 1970s and accelerating in the '90s, a particularly destructive form of coal mining called mountaintop-removal mining laid waste to vast regions of eastern Kentucky and West Virginia. The practice continues. By 2010, an estimated 1.4 million acres--equivalent to the land area of Delaware--will have been mined through mountaintop removal.

The method, a radical form of surface mining, entails blowing off the tops of hills and mountains to get at the seams of coal underneath. The debris is then bulldozed into the valleys and hollows below, burying streams, demolishing habitat, and damaging ecosystems. Formerly lush mountains have turned into bombed-out moonscapes, verdant valleys into barren deserts. Sediment by the millions of tons has reached the lake and filled in much of it, transforming once deep pools into swamps.

For the coal companies, mountaintop-removal mining is a cheaper way to extract coal than underground mining; it requires fewer people and less mechanical finesse. For the people who live here, and whose families have lived for generations off the bounty of the land and water, it has meant the systematic obliteration of their home.
Both Democratic and Republican lawmakers have been allowing this kind of devastation of our natural resources to occur in order to reap the benefits of cheap "coal". However, when all the environmental impacts of mining and burning coal are taken into account, there is nothing cheap about burning coal. We are paying for it with our health and the health of our children and grandchildren.

Here's a link to another good article about the impact of coal mining on our country. What I like about this article is it actually shows pictures of the amount of coal the average family uses for lighting,heating,cooling,etc. It also describes the long term,irreversible changes in our natural resources which result from coal mining.
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200901/coal.aspx

How does Lois like to say?? ah yes...

happy jack +1

happy jack wrote:

sparks wrote:

Here's a link to another good article about the impact of coal mining on our country. What I like about this article is it actually shows pictures of the amount of coal the average family uses for lighting,heating,cooling,etc. It also describes the long term,irreversible changes in our natural resources which result from coal mining.
http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/200901/coal.aspx

So shut down your computer - you're wasting coal.

Edited by Admin. Please keep it civil. Original text can be viewed by clicking on the spoiler box.

Spoiler:

Feel free to post any links you have showing the long term benefits of coal burning plants. Since 1980,the prevalence of asthma has increased 75% due to air pollution. One of the biggest sources of air pollution in this country are coal fired generators.http://www.arb.ca.gov/research/asthma/asthma.htm Why don't you explain to us the reasons we shouldn't figure out ways to generate electricity without making people sick?