By Max Lindberg •
April 19, 2008
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For all the minorities in this country who have raised pluperfect hell about their past or current situations, the American Indian has been the quietist, and I wonder why.
Before you write me nasty emails, I’m not minimizing the concerns of minorities in this country: they have their issues and the right to use their voices, and that’s good.
But think for a moment about the original settlers of this land, the American Indian.
They did just fine for centuries, sustaining their cultures with the fruits of the land, picking fights and having wars, just like we all do.
Then, came the white man (no emails please, because that’s what happened), who invaded the natives’ birthright, confiscated their tribal lands, transferred them to reservations and literally forgot about them. Many of those Native Americans to this very day are without electricity and running water, in some cases, living in dirt poor conditions, and they languish without raising their voices.
How incredibly sad.
A federal judge has blocked a mining company from exploring for any further uranium near the grand Canyon. Several groups had sued the U.S. Forest Service for backing the plan without full environmental reviews. U.S. District Court Judge Mary Murguia of the U.S. District Court in Arizona issued a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction stopping the drilling late last week.
“The Grand Canyon is too important for the Forest Service to give short shrift to the possible and significant negative impacts of uranium mining exploration,” said Sandy Bahr, conservation outreach director for the Sierra Club’s Grand Canyon Chapter. “The Forest Service should take a hard look at the impacts and the public should have an opportunity to review and comment on this mining exploration,” added Bahr.
By Noelle dEstries •
August 23, 2007
How does the Bush administration react to the latest coal mine disaster in Utah?
By recommending the increasing use of Mountaintop Removal Mining. I’ve written about this terrible practice here before, but for those who missed it- MRM involves literally cutting an entire mountain down and dumping the rubble in the valleys nearby. It’s incredibly destructive and leaves a terribly blight on the land afterwards. I mean, they are chopping down the WHOLE mountain. From the International Herald Tribune…
WASHINGTON: The Bush administration is set to issue a regulation on Friday that would extend the coal mining practice of mountaintop removal. The technique involves blasting off the tops of mountains and dumping the rubble into valleys and streams.
It has been used in Appalachian coal country for 20 years under a cloud of legal and regulatory confusion.
The new rule would allow the practice to continue and expand, providing only that mine operators minimize the debris and cause the least environmental harm, although those terms are not clearly defined and to some extent merely restate existing law.
The Office of Surface Mining in the Interior Department drafted the rule, which will be subject to a 60-day comment period and could be revised, although officials indicated that it was not likely to be changed substantially.
The regulation is the culmination of six and a half years of work by the administration to make it easier for mining companies to dig more coal to meet growing energy demands and reduce U.S. dependence on foreign oil.
This is where I wish I believed in the concept of Hell, because if anyone deserves to be in such a place, it’s President Bush and his band of evil cronies who put power and wealth ahead of any other consideration. What kind of jerkass chops an entire mountain down just to get at the coal?
By Noelle dEstries •
August 20, 2007
By Noelle dEstries •
August 20, 2007
There is an awesomely smart post about the economics of coal over at Grist. the gist of it is that Coal might end up pricing itself out of the market. Old coal fired power plants that were built before the Clean Air Act are cheap to run- the capital investment has been made back and they don’t have to run power sucking pollution or CO2 controls/sequestering. New Coal is expensive because you have to deploy […]
By Noelle dEstries •
August 16, 2007
Amanda Congdon, the famed (and hawt) web video diva, just picked up a news item from Planetsave for her videocast for ABCNews. The second item she covers in her quirky vidcast is my story on the guy who turned down five billion dollars (yes, FIVE BILLION!) from a French uranium mining company who wanted to tear up his ancestral homeland.
Is it me, or does Amanda seem to linger, just a bit, when my name is on the screen. She’s obviously researched who I am and wants to know more.
Amanda, I’m sorry to say that I’m married, and while you are quite fetching, you didn’t make it on my “List“, so any kind of Entourage like hookup is out of the question. Please stop calling.
for 
Tennessee Senator (you guessed it, a Republican) Lamar Alexander is a moron. He thinks wind farms “destroy the landscape“.
To a lot of people, it’s hard to imagine why anyone would actually be against renewable energy. It’s a little bit like being against puppies. Yet these opponents exist, and I’m sorry to say some are warming seats in the United States Senate.
Take Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander, for example. Sen. Alexander hails from a part of the country that is home to “six of the nation’s 10 largest carbon-dioxide-emitting coal-fired power plants,” according to Tennessean.com. You might think that Alexander is somehow beholden to the coal industry because of this, or that his Martha’s Vineyard property and the debate over the Cape Wind project might influence him, or that the campaign contributions that flow his way from the most carbon-dioxide producing utility in the country are the source of his clean energy antipathy. Not so, says the Senator. He doesn’t like wind power, he claims, for aesthetic reasons. “I think they absolutely destroy the landscape.”
Let’s look at some photos and see how his opinion stands up.
I've passionately written about the destructive nature of Mountaintop removal before here on Green Options. In an effort to mine coal, entire mountains are laid barren through explosive practices that destroy the ecosystem and lay waste to streams and valleys.
The past couple years have been difficult, with efforts to fight legislation that allows the mining to proceed so recklessly quickly brushed aside in court. Remediation projects in the past have proven to do
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I links, you links, we all links, for my links.
I’ve got a whole mess o’ links for you today, most green, a few non thrown in for kicks. Enjoy!
