causes & news

There vwas a story on NPR's THE STORY abouy a lady who lives there & has been fighting the coal companies & the harressment she & her family have had to endure,,,chec it out it is aechieved.

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The horrible thing about coal as energy is that it is subsidized by our government. When these Senators and Congressmen and women pledged to support these industries, it never counted on the horrible destruction of mountaintops and pollution of the streams and the environment. The process of subsidization is a governmental phenomena. No one makes the "dinero" messing around with wind or solar energy. There are no kickbacks and business as usual would come to an end.

The Germans and the Dutch have solved their problems of energy. The Dutch have a surplus and run much of there energy from wind power, likewise, the Germans have moved into a massive program and use solar energy. They have about 25% of the energy coming from solar energy, alone. But first they had to kick out the bad players.

Sadly the myth is that we need coal-burning plants and nuclear energy that actually takes more energy to run as an alternative. This is total nonsense!
An Indian reservation that include a Hopi and Navajo reservations closed a coal plant that ran coal with massive amounts of water in pipelines to supply Las Vegas and L.A. The pipelines drew the water from their lands and their aquifers went dry. It's no secret that catastrophic things happen that ruin people's lives when we do drastic things. However, the reservations, themselves, have turned to solar and wind for energy. But they realized it was a small sacrifice for their well-being that they get rid of coal related operations!

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I have seen coverage of other environmental disasters caused by MTR coal mining and when slurry pit dams are breached and this type of coal mining needs to be outlawed and until that time Karl Mueller's idea sounds like a good interim approach.

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Bernard C. has hit the nail on the head. Studies need to be done to determine the environmental effects of large wind turbine farms. Anyone that has been near a large wind turbine farm when they are running would realize that nobody could live anywhere close to them. The ground shakes and the harmonic noise from hundreds of rotating turbine blades would make it impossible to keep your sanity. With a population growth at the current sustained rate, eventually houses will be built near wind turbine farms, especially those being built in the Midwest. Wind turbine farms are a good replacement for coal fired power plants, but federal legislation needs to be passed on where they can be built and to give a minimum distance from them to a home.
Much work needs to be done with solar power to make it a more efficient source of power before it could feasibly be used as an alternative to coal fired or hydro turbine power plants.
As Bernard C. said, we will steadily increase our demand for power if the population continues to increase at the current rate and as technology continues to evolve and new gadgets are invented. Until we solve the population explosion and figure out how to charge our cell phones, ipod, GPS units, electric cars, etc. without electricity, the problem will persist.
I would also like to see the elimination of coal fired power plants, but we need to think about reducing our lust for more electric power as well.

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The county I reside in Maryland had the 11th worst air quality in 2007 in the country, due to the coal fired power plants located in THE OHIO VALLEY. So with no effective national regulations in place states and jurisdictions which do not have these dirty fossil fuel power sources are being polluted by those that do. The air comes straight from the Ohio valley to Maryland and makes our air quality extremely poor, combined with the pollution from the capitol beltway.

Thank you Massey energy to continue to s@&* on all of America!!

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I think that all of Massey's upper management, stockholders, and their extended families should be forced to relocate their homes to the area directly below the dam, and reside there for the duration of their involvement with Massey, Inc.

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Anyone who is semi-concious, go and call your congressmen right now!
Dont wait for the movie to come out, by then it will be to late, they bring their plight to the public, generally when its to late to do anything about it.
Now it the time when the public should take action, threaten them with the next election and they will open their mouths in congress, make your demands "STRONG" and continue to call to see what progress they have made, let them know " the people are watching!" and we are now "big brother".

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The United States of America (and the United Kingdom and Australia) like to think of themselves as progressive countries when it comes to the environment but, in reality, their (per capita) environmental impacts are actually amongst the worst in the world.

The problem with fossil fuels is not just the pollution when and where they are burnt or the resulting contribution to global warming but the destruction caused to ecosystems, plants, animals and indigenous people's lands at the sites where the coal is mined or the oil is drilled. Localized solar and wind energy is the way to go; not just on family homes but also on apartment blocks and non-residential buildings. Solar electrolysis of water could produce hydrogen. Biodiesel that causes destruction to forests is not the solution. Nuclear is not the solution; not "just" because of the radioactive waste problem but due to the problems related to mining (analogous to those with coal) and because uranium reserves are very limited.

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I agree with the sentiments expressed that to destroy yet another chunk of natural beauty and replace it with pollution is a tragedy.
The greatest problem is that politicians, the green movement and the general US (and indeed World) public refuse point blank to deal with root cause issues. The US and European populations are bursting at the seams and growing exponentially as a result of immigration and increasing birth rates. Whether or not you leap out of your SUVs onto your bicycles and use those trendy curly bulbs the demand by a growing population for energy to build and maintain houses and schools, grow and process food and move people around the country will escalate rather than diminish. There are no energy fairy god mothers waiting in the wings to rescue us with some magical technology. The fact is that neither solar nor wind energy have made any real advances in 20 years and the very mention of nuclear causes universal tantrums. There are two alternatives; either you huddle around a small fire in a cave or you put up with more pollution and less nature. There is a third option and that is to deal with the root cause but until the bulk of humanity learns to connect cause to effect we haven’t a prayer.

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it brings tears to my eyes seeing corporate greed taking precedence over these incredible natural resources!!!!

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