Green Options

I love mountains. Do you love mountains, too?

Oddly enough, some folks feel no real affection for the mountains–or even hills, sand dunes, dirt piles…or speed bumps for that matter! These flatlanders, who seem to congregate most deliberately in the middle portions of these United States and similar terrains, huff and puff and would love to blow all the mountains down. Mountains, for these folks who take the plane view of things, are just one more obstacle that has to be overcome in life…one more wall to climb over to get where they are going. Or for others with an urge to conquer, mountains are just one more notch to put on the belt of “extreme living,” one more element of Earth to bring under humanity’s domain.

Ironic, this missing amazement over mountains is, considering that mountains have held such a fascination for humans of all locales, colors, creeds, and cultural epochs. Think of Mount Kailas (also known as Meru, Sumeru, etc.) in the Himalayas of Tibet, which is held sacred in Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and Bön as the center of the world, the residence of Siva or the Buddha Demchok, a place of enlightenment, the source of all spiritual power…. Think of the mountain in Christianity where Jesus gave his Sermon on the Mount. Think of Mount Sinai in Judaism and Moses’s chat with God at the top, where he received the Ten Commandments. Think of Mount Olympus in Greek mythology, where Zeus and his cohorts gather when not messing around with humans, or Mount Parnassus, where the Muses reside and give inspiration to the artistically inclined. Is it any wonder, then, that a typical route for the spiritual and artistic paths leads up to a mountain peak, to a mountain cave, to a mountain niche…?

And yet nowadays, no one seems to give much love to mountains. No one seems to dream about mountain peaks and mountain sides, about winds so strong they whip away your breath and your hair and anything not tied down with several strong ropes. No one longs to run up a mountain side to the top…and then to launch up into the wide blue sky.

If you’re green-minded, it’s easy to hate coal. What’s not as easy, though, is discovering that — as light an environmental footprint as you try to leave every day — you’re probably part of the coal problem.

After all, coal might be dirty, deadly and environmentally destructive, but it also has a purpose, one of which is to fuel the power plants that generate our electricity. So unless you’re living and [...]