June 3, 2010 Constant images from the oil plume spreading devastation across the Gulf coast inspire Harrogate novelist Silas House to consider the similar costs to Appalachia of mountaintop-removal mining. And he has some advice for the president: “It’s time to start talking about sustainable jobs for miners who are losing theirs to machines on MTR sites. It’s time to try to salvage these devastated MTR sites into the only thing they’re really usable for now: wind farms. It’s time that legislators started talking to the president about the first renewable energy jobs going to miners. Most of all, it’s time to see mountaintop removal as being as devastating an environmental disaster as the spill. Because it is.” Read the rest of his essay here.
Devastating
Silas House points out the similarities between the devastation in the Gulf and the effects of mountaintop-removal mining in Appalachia
