(Cross-posted at the Appalachian Voices blog)

This post is intended to continue to bring to light the problems with current energy production and consumption, and show what one little corner of the world here in western North Carolina is doing to pitch in on a GLOBAL problem of fossil fuel production and consumption.  Tip of the hat the many folks whose continuing work for a sustainable energy future is ever-educational and inspiring.

As America awakes to the effects that our energy production and consumption is having on the globe, people are shocked to find out that we do things like blow up 100s of 1000s of acres in our own mountains for a just little bit of coal. One of the most agreed upon tenets among those of us working for sustainable energy policy is that "there is no silver bullet" as far as alternative energy. Another words, it isn't feasible to run everything in the United States off just solar, just wind, or just hydro power. I adhere to this belief. America will need to localize our energy solutions in order to create the sustainable, clean, stable, domestic energy policy that everyone wants and needs.

In Appalachia, we begin by trading nightmarish mountaintop removal coal-mining, for an afternoon breeze...
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Larry Gibson welcomes you to Kayford Mountain.

For the people who may hear this...go for a walk in the woods. Be real quiet. And listen. The wilderness will talk to you. And I guarantee you, come to see me and I'll put you on a mountain site and let you go for a walk and NOTHING will talk to you.

Larry Gibson

Welcome to Larry's home in Kayford Mountain, in the heart of the central Appalachians. His ancestors settled here more than 230 years ago. Before there was ever a coal company.

While Larry Gibson grew up on Kayford's beautiful slopes, the mountains rose upward in every direction from his home. He treasures some of the best memories of his life from those days. He recalls that "it wasn't the fast life then, it was the good life."

More than three hundred of Larry's relatives, including his father and grandfather (both coal miners) are laid to rest in the family cemetery, which sits atop the once mighty mountain.

Then, in 1986, mountaintop removal started. Over the next 20 years, "the slow motion destruction of Kayford Mountain has been continuous - 24 hours a day, seven days a week." Arch Coal Inc. and Massey Energy have flattened the mountains surrounding Larry's house into a 12,000 acre "pancake."

Larry's house now sits on a high terrace looking downward into the modern moonscape(interactive panorama of Kayford's "reclaimed area" requires high speed) that once rose into some of the most ancient and bio-diverse mountains on the planet.

The mine site comes to within 200 feet of the family cemetery, and the blasts shake the hallowed ground. In 2003, just adjacent to his property, the coal companies induced the largest non-nuclear explosion since World War II on Kayford Mountain. Boulders the size of mini-vans were blasted on to Larry's property.

As one visitor noted, "gone is the peace and stillness that the old cemetery once harbored. For Gibson and other family members, mountaintop mining is practically raising the dead, while burying the living."

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The recent people powered movement of the CT-Senate race isnt the only place where good people are finding their voice! Deep in the hollows of WV, something miraculous is happening...

If we fail as parents, we have failed as Americans - Bo Webb

Grandfather Ed Wiley is no traditional environmentalist, child rights advocate, or political activist. His history and his heritage run deep into the coal encrusted veins of the Appalachian Mountains.

Ed Wiley has never fought sludge impoundments. He has built them.

He has never boycotted coal. He has extracted it.

He worked in processing plants just like the one less than a football field from Marsh Fork Elementary School, in Sundial, WV - full of enormous clanging machinery, explosive gases, and chemically treated coal dust.

He helped build the 2.8 billion gallon sludge impoundment directly above Marsh Fork Elementary School where his 11-year old granddaughter goes to school and is poisoned everyday by those same chemicals.

Now this man is spending his retirement walking 455 miles over 40 days and nights in the heat of summer!

Why?...

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(Crossposted at the Appalachian Voices' blog)Things are swingin for Ed in the "serious backroadage" of West Virginia as he makes his trip from The WV capitol of Charleston to Washington DC. Visit our friends at Pennies of Promise to learn more about Ed and why any grandfather would walk 455 miles in the heat of summer so that his grandkids can have a safe place to go to school!<u>Please</u&gt, everyone help get Grandpa Ed some attention by RECOMMENDING his story. His granddaughter, along with dozens of others, is sick from a coal silo less than 300 feet from their school, which sits directly below a 2.8 billion gallon sludge dam. They have been ignored for 2 years, now this grandfather is walking 455 miles in the heat of summer so that his granddaughter can have a safe place to go to school. Learn more at Appalachian Voices and Pennies of Promise

Here's the word from the road... Pass it on!

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(Cross-posted at the new Appalachian Voices blog)

Jeff Goodell, author of Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America's Energy Future, just wrote a terrific editorial in the New York Times called Our Black Future, which touches on the growing need and want of coal in supplying America energy.

I can tell you 400,000 reasons why coal can NOT play an increasingly significant role in our energy future.

But the #1 reason to stay away from coal is a human one.

From 1984 to 2004, the average coal miner's per-shift productivity more than doubled, while wages declined by 20 percent (adjusted for inflation). If we simply increase consumption, we will be condemning large areas of the country, including eastern Kentucky and southern West Virginia, to national sacrifice zones.

Add that phrase to the mountaintop removal vernacular - NATIONAL SACRIFICE ZONE.

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