Mountaintop Removal: Strip Mining? Why call it mining?

When folks hear the word mining, they think of mine shafts. They think underground. They think pickaxes and hardhats and miner's lamps, and guys with smudged faces who trudge out of mine shaft elevators at the end of a backbreaking, lung-soiling shift.

They don't, I suspect, think of huge twenty story tall machines with names like "The Captain" scraping away entire mountain ranges, filling sparkling clear streams and creeks with sticky goo. They don't think of suffocated trout washed up on stream banks; poisoned, bloated raccoons; and starving deer searching in vain for vegetation to graze. And they don't think of multi-generational families that go back three hundred years on a stretch of land -- a wooded mountainside, or a verdant holler pasture -- driven out, destitute, landless and depressed. But that's what strip mining is today. And that's what people who run the strip mining business choose to do every day: get up in the morning, and destroy the world  -- for families, wildlife and national posterity.

So, I say, let's not call it strip mining. Let's call it...  

coal landscRaping.

And watch The Jeff Bigger's video if you don't believe me:

Ruination of the Everglades...

 ... and other bright Republican Business Opportunities

 This story appeared in the New York Times, last week:
Deal to Save Everglades May Help Sugar Firm

And when I found out what a great job Governor Crist is doing on behalf of United States Sugar, I had to sit right down and write the good governor a letter:

Dear Governor Crist,

I want to thank you for your proud defense of the Everglades. Your courage is exemplary and typical of your party's indefatigable leadership. As steadfast, Republican, free-market acolytes so often do, you funnel public money into private hands with aplomb -- the filling of the United States Sugar, and Gunster Law coffers is no exception. I'm sure you are proud of this notable accomplishment, and I'm sure your family is, too. On down through the generations, your descendants can look back, and fondly reflect upon your selfless sacrifice, which turned that once useless, unprofitable, wasteland of drinking-water and wildlife into vast tracts of pollution riddled, over-sized monuments of McMansion indulgence.

Keep up the good work, Governor. We're all going places with you out in front.

 And then I couldn't resist posting a comment on the article, too:

Classic Republican behavior when public money is put at their disposal: socialized medicine for self-inflicted corporate injury. There are absolutely no limits to the volumes of taxpayer money Republicans are willing to funnel into the grossly negligent and blissfully incompetent hands of Republican businessmen who find themselves utterly incapable of running any manner of business, small or large, without public, socialized financial subsidy to rescue them from their own brilliant investment decisions. The solitude of jail is too good for Bush, Crist, Mieux, Buker, et al, but public humiliation -- if they are capable of feeling shame -- might be a good start. Thanks for an informative, but depressing story, Messrs. Van Natta & Cave.

Leave the fish in the sea...

(source: NY Times)            

I don't know about you, but I think these majestic animals are a lot more majestic when they're swimming around the ocean, even if I can't see 'em. A dead tuna is just an insult -- to the fish, to our self-respect, to all the delusions of dignity we entertain.  Tuna are evolutionary wonders: they are warm-blooded (rare for fish), and that warmth makes them fast -- up to 70kph (43mph). And they get big: a fish was sold on January 04, 2010 that weighed 232 kilos (513 lbs.) for $177,000 (Giant Tuna Fetches $177, 000 at Japanese Auction). What a waste of money and fish. These astonishing creatures are headed for extinction, or at least a severe crash, which will make them curiosities that our descendants will see in pictures. Our sorry offspring will marvel at the ephemeral image on their screen, while they try in vain to visualize these proud fish swiftly roaming the planet. Sorry, kids, we at 'em.

Can we not show a little humility and self-restraint? No one has the "right" to destroy a species, and anyone who fishes them or eats them is culpable. Would it kill us to eat more prolific species that are lower on the food chain (and less riddled with heavy metals)? No. Will we? Probably not. It's a classic "tragedy of the commons," and tragedies never end well, do they?

Happy New Year.

Stop Shooting My Wolves on My Land

At the behest of the National Resource Defense Council, I fired off the following:

I urge you to restore the wolf's protection under the Endangered Species Act and submit your plan to rigorous scientific review. Trading these native inhabitants for sheep and cattle grazing on public land is despicable. Preserve your integrity, preserve my integrity. Call off the guns and develop a sound wolf recovery plan that ensures a healthy future for this essential member of the western ecosystem.

Please.

Courage!

You should, too.