We frequently talk about how much coal-fired power plants spew greenhouse gases, but it's just as important to spread the news about the impact of coal mining -- especially the destructive and devastating practice of mountaintop removal coal mining.
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The local Sierra Club and Kentuckians For The Commonwealth (KFTC) noticed the damage, which the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers later confirmed. According to the Corps, TECO mined the area and then contacted the Corps to say what it had purportedly accidentally done. Although the Corps learned about the violation back in March, to date neither the Corps nor state agencies have taken any enforcement action.
This week the Sierra Club and KFTC, represented by Joe Lovett of the Appalachian Center for the Economy and the Environment, sent Clintwood and TECO Coal a notice of intent to sue. Yet this issue points to the bigger disrespect for the rule of law, and the failure of regulatory agencies to enforce the law and to protect the communities so hard hit by the mining.
With a rash of new mountaintop removal coal mine permits in the pipeline across Appalachia, this has to stop and the Sierra Club, KFTC and Lovett are stepping in because the regulatory agencies are not. We also need to be investing in clean energy sources, and not the dirty, destructive and greenhouse-gas-spewing energy sources of the past.
International Effects of Global Warming
There's been some news out recently on the effects of global warming around the globe. First up, a June 8 article about how "the 1,500 residents of Carteret Island, an atoll of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, Papua New Guinea, are fast becoming the world's first climate change refugees."
Then on June 11 the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) released a report stating that "Africa produces a tiny fraction of the world's greenhouse gases but is particularly vulnerable to the effects of global warming." You can read more about this report in an LA Times article, or you can look at the report itself on the UNEP website.
The Hotline, the Sierra Club's global warming e-newsletter, keeps you up to date on the fight to stop global warming. Every two weeks, you will receive an email with the information and tools to put real global warming solutions to work. |