Your Government at Work

Magnetic Poles · Jan 18, 2009

This is what you get when government is in the pocket of corporate interests. The Bush administration has pushed a policy of tearing down mountains to get at coal and other energy resources. This lack of restraint is ruining mountains and headwaters in Appalachia and the Rocky Mountain West forever. Below is an excerpt, but you can read the entire article and listen to the broadcast by CLICKING HERE. Rather than protecting our natural resources, government is helping coal companies destroy them. I can only hope that new Interior Secretary Ken Salazar will help end this destruction. Corporations need oversight by the people, not the government helping them decimate our beautiful nation.

Weekend Edition Saturday, January 17, 2009 · There might not be a better place to contemplate the impact of President Bush's environmental legacy than Larry Gibson's mountain in southern West Virginia.

Gibson grew up there, and so did many of his ancestors. It used to be that if you stood at the edge of his property, all you'd see was Kayford Mountain. "You could not see past this mountain because this was the highest," Gibson says.
It was 3,200 feet high at some points. But now Gibson is standing at 2,400 feet looking down.

"And this here is what hell looks like to me on Earth," Gibson says on a rainy winter day.

What used to be a peak is now a massive mining site. A coal company scrapped off the top of the mountain to get to coal seams. Across Appalachia, similar operations are flattening mountains and covering up streams. The Bush administration has promoted what is called mountaintop removal mining, and it even changed environmental rules when lawsuits threatened to halt the practice.
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