Mountaintop removal, the hyper-destructive practice of blowing up entire mountains to get at coal near the surface, is in for a rough ride.  Though in technological terms mountaintop removal is downright third-world compared to the high tech sustainable energy industry, it’s still been going nonstop right here in the Appalachian mountains of our own northeastern U.S..  The result has been hundreds of mountains destroyed in one of North America’s richest ecosystems, hundreds of miles of streams buried, and an economic and public health climate that is among the worst in the nation.  Now all that is poised to end.  Earlier this year the U.S. EPA suspended the mountaintop removal permitting process and Raw Story is now reporting that the first permit veto is immanent.

According to Raw reporter Joe Byrne, the Mingo Logan Coal Company was notified this past Friday by the EPA that the mountaintop removal permit in the pipeline for its Spruce No. 1 mine in West Virginia faces a veto due to “a high potential for downstream water quality excursions under current mining and valley fill practices.”  With financial backers like Bank of America cutting their ties with companies that practice mountaintop mining, the impending veto could be a harbinger of more to come.

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James Hansen is considered the top climate scientist in the United States. He first testified to Congress about the dangers of global warming as far back as 1988, and he has taken up the cause of ending the devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining in West Virginia. On June 22 in Yale e360, he published a “Plea to President Obama” on the subject, and yesterday he took it a step further: he joined in an act of civil disobedience by attempting to trespass on the property of Massey Energy near Coal River Mountain in West Virginia, and was arrested along with other protesters including Darryl Hannah and former US Representative Ken Hechler (D-WV).

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The stimulus package approved in February contains items aimed at making everyone an environmentalist. Well, let’s say practical environmentalist. By offering tax incentives for a variety of home greening initiatives, Congress managed to both raise and lower my spirits around environmental issues: it’s great that people will have reason to save energy and live more efficiently, but I hate that the reason has to be money before anyone pays attention.

As reported in the New York Times, the green measures homeowners can take and get paid for it include home-shell improvements like better windows and insulation all the way up through solar cells on rooftops and buying a hybrid vehicle. Overall, individual tax payers can earn up to $1,500 in tax credits for these types of initiatives.

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With the help of conservation groups, the U.S. Office of Surface Mining launched the Appalachian Regional Reforestation Initiative to attempt to rescue the thousands forest acres left barren by mountaintop coal mining.

The volunteer-based initiative, which hopes to eventually plant 38 million trees in Appalachia, received the endorsement of the United Nations Environment Program yesterday. The UN aims to plant 7 billion trees in the next three years across the globe, so every small project across the globe contributes.

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Just days after news leaked that Obama’s Environmental Protection Agency will designate CO2 as a pollutant, the EPA has announced that hundreds of mountaintop removal coal mining permits will be put on hold while their impact on streams and waterways is evaluated.

Mountaintop removal is a controversial method of extracting coal that literally blows the tops off mountains to access the coal underneath. The waste is then dumped in streams and wetlands, which has alarmed environmentalists and community activists.

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Not something your run of the mill backpacker “eco adventure” travel agency would do. But then, Exquisite Safaris Philanthropic Travel’s main focus as  a business is to raise funds for high impact non profits around the world, through the vehicle of memorable, powerful travel experiences, spending substantial time with local people in the regions you visit. Real, meaningful interactions, rather then pre packaged tourist shows. And at the same time you get a superbly accommodated trip.

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In coal mining country, companies are encroaching more and more into old graveyards for the coal underneath. Unfortunately, they’re not the best at keeping track of the bodies they remove from the ground.

Walter Young, a 63-year-old man from Pigeon Creek, West Virginia, told the Associated Press that he went to check on the site of his great-grandmother’s grave one day only to find that the entire cemetery was gone. And upon questioning the coal mining company, no one had any clue where his relative’s grave had been moved.

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Two groups that oppose mountaintop removal coal mining have been told they are not welcome to hold their upcoming meetings at a former Boy Scout camp deep in the coal fields of eastern Kentucky — despite both having held events there without incident in the past.

Jim Scheff of Kentucky Heartwood said his group called last May to reserve Camp Blanton for a gathering called the Heartwood Forest Council, to be held Memorial Day weekend. Another group, Mountain Justice, booked the camp for the days leading up to the holiday weekend.

Both groups found out just two weeks ago that their reservations were suddenly canceled.

Board member and attorney for the trust that operates the camp, Sidney Douglass told the Lexington Herald-Tribune that several board members have ties to the coal industry and “board members didn’t want to get the camp involved in the kind of controversies that they’re involved in.”

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Ashley Judd is speaking out against mountaintop removal mining, and you can too.

Here is Judd’s speech, delivered at a Kentuckians For The Commonwealth rally. The footage of strip mined mountaintops is horrifying:
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According to the Sierra Club, mountaintop removal mining:

…has already buried more than 1,200 miles of streams and threatens to destroy 1.4 million acres of land by 2020. The mining poisons drinking water, lays waste to wildlife habitat, increases the risk of flooding and wipes out entire communities.

A recent federal ruling allows the Army Corps of Engineers to start mountaintop removal mining in several sites in Appalachia. This overturns a 2007 ruling that found the permits to mine the land illegal. There is a backlog of 80-90 permits that could be granted, dramatically increasing the devastating mountaintop removal mining in the area. Local activist groups and the Sierra Club are asking President Obama “to follow up on statements he had made during his campaign that were critical of mountaintop mining by reversing Bush administration policies intended to expand the practice,” according to the New York Times.

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Climate action group Rising Tide is joining forces with City Life/Vida Urbana, a housing justice organization, to announce a mass action against Bank of America. Instead of the usual sign holding and chanting (which has also been taking place), they are asking people across the country to close their bank accounts on February 14^th- Valentines Day.

Why?

Because Bank of America continues to kick poor families out of their foreclosed homes and finance the ecologically devastating practice of mountaintop removal. The two causes may seem unrelated, but house foreclosures affect primarily low income families- many of them minorities, and harmful coal extracting practices often take their biggest toll on poorer rural families. According to Rising Tide, the pollution from mountaintop removal poisons the water in Appalachia and has forced people to leave their homes.

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Find Your Coal Profile.

About half of the electricity generated in the United States comes from coal.  Chances are that coal produces at least part of your home electricity.  Or, it helps produce the goods and services you use.

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Despite activists’ efforts earlier in the month to stop the Bush administration’s 11^th hour changes to environmental regulations, the EPA has gone ahead with undoing some rules. Specifically, they have signed off on loosening 1983’s coal dumping regulation, which prevent dumping within 100 feet of a river.

Fortunately, environmental groups are taking the ruling to court, saying that the already lax enforcement of the law has led to environmental destruction. Over 500 miles of rivers and streams have been adversely affected by dumping since 2001, and further weakening of the law could be devastating.

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The latest in a flurry of environmentally-devastating, last-minute rule changes from the Bush administration will give the go ahead for coal mining companies to fill valleys with the mining debris left over from lobbing-off mountaintops.

Earlier this week, the EPA and the White House Council on Environmental Quality approved a rule change that will allow coal mining companies to lawfully bury stream valleys and fill them with the tops of mountains that have been carved off for the coal they contain.

For years, coal mining companies were allowed to file for exemptions to a 25 year-old rule prohibiting the dumping of fill from mountaintop removal mining within 100 feet of streams and were granted them the vast majority of the time. In practice, the government had essentially been ignoring the rule for years; now they have codified that ignorance into a regulatory standard.

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After significant pressure from the National Resources Defense Council, Rainforest Action Network and a whole host of other activist groups, Bank of America conceded to withdrawing financial support of multinational coal companies like Massey Energy, which is widely known as one of the worst perpetrators of environmental offenses in Appalachia. The bank’s official policy statement reads:

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So, while Google Earth can show you the wonders of our blue planet like you've never seen them before, it also reveals mankind's impact and destruction. Those of you that are familiar with the concept of mountaintop removal (in which entire mountains are leveled for coal) might have viewed before and after pictures of scenes in and around the Appalachin Mountains. Such images are moving, but if you've never "flown" above the vast swaths of the actual destruction using Google Earth, you're missing out on the complete, horrible picture.

A group called Appalachian Voices has teamed up with Google to include a new mountaintop removal coal mining layer in Google Earth. This layer includes the National Memorial for the Mountains, a project that shows the locations and tells the stories of mountains in Appalachia impacted by mountaintop removal. It's a sad fact that over 470 mountaintops have been destroyed for coal. Google Earth will give its audience of nearly 200 million people the opportunity to learn first hand how each removal impacted the families, environment, and species in the area. What's even more frightening is when you look down from above and see these projects moving ever closer to areas of pristine beauty. The term, "raping our planet for resources" has never been transformed into such detail before.

Please download Google Earth, follow these instructions, and take a look for yourself. Show your neighbors, your kids, and anyone else that might care. If we ever needed reasons to consider investments in renewable energy, such imagery is a convincing argument. Go. Look. Educate. Support. Act. Inspire.