Fossil = DoDo = Fossil (coal = coal = coal)

I grew up in "Thatcher's England" when they were closing out the coal mines and the fabric of whole communities was rent asunder. It was brutal, angry, violent, tragic... and, I realized long after I had grown up and moved into a bigger universe, unnecessary. The era of coal was over, yes, but the institutional mind of the day could not get over the characterization of the striking miners as troublemakers who couldn't see the writing on the wall. What a different growing experience we children would have had if we had instead been witness to a People being transitioned through to an acknowledged new era with innovative applications like 'Appreciative Inquiry' or 'Wisdom Council'

(just two of numerous that are out there), where the solutions would come from the people themselves, even as they integrated that the means of income to which they were born was, thank goodness, passing away.

My father was a coal miner, but not before he was a logger. He lived the paradox of loving the trees and the woods of his youth, relished his work with the men who were clearing the trees to make way for new towns.. Then came the war, World War II, every 10th man sent down the mine, and down the mine he went for 5 long years. Long years to a young man who lived outdoors but no comparison to the coal miners who spent all the decades of their working lives underground and carried the legacy in their lungs, with all the respiratory distress that goes with digging coal.

All this lit up in me when this "true cost of coal" came over my desk this morning. The trauma of the coal industry's demise in England can still be keenly felt. But here, once again, the externalized cost of extracting coal is as real as when it was the lungs of men; now it is literally laid bare on the land as the coal-extracting techniques have scaled up to the 'might' to remove mountains, and the land is scraped bare and black as the lungs of our fathers, exposed for all to see. Then see we must, but in a time when we have grasped, thanks be to Life, that we have many other options beyond this fossil fuel we have called C*O*A*L.

What follows below is lifted clean from my friend Britt Bravo blogger blog 'Have Fun, Do Good:
http://havefundogood.blogspot.com/2008/06/ilovemountainsorg-bloggers-challenge.html

Tag! You're It!

iLoveMountains.org is a campaign to stop mountaintop removal for coal mining. What is mountaintop removal you ask?

From the iLoveMountains.org web site:

"Mountaintop removal is a relatively new type of coal mining that began in Appalachia in the 1970s as an extension of conventional strip mining techniques. Primarily, mountaintop removal is occurring in West Virginia, Kentucky, Virginia and Tennessee. Coal companies in Appalachia are increasingly using this method because it allows for almost complete recovery of coal seams while reducing the number of workers required to a fraction of what conventional methods require."

Some of the effects of mountaintop removal on people can be loss or pollution of drinking water, flooding, living with blasting up to 300 feet from your home 24 hours a day, cracking in wells and foundations, and sludge dams that can leak and contaminate drinking water.

You might be thinking, well, that's sad, but it's kinda far away. There isn't much I can do about it from here. That's why iLoveMountains.org came up with the What's My Connection tool. It allows you to type in your zip code and see how you are connected to mountaintop removal.

For example, when I type in my zip code in Oakland, CA, it tells me, "Your electricity provider, Pacific Gas Electric Co., buys coal from companies engaged in mountaintop removal." Once you've seen your connection, you can sign a pledge to help end mountaintop removal, forward the page onto friends, contact your Congressperson, and contact your power company.

iLoveMountains is asking bloggers (and non-bloggers) to tell folks about all of these tools, and about the mountains that can still be saved by sharing videos about America's Most Endangered Mountains. The 4-minute video above is the story of Daymon Morgan who lives on one of America's Most Endangered Mountains, the Huckleberry Ridge in Kentucky.

Here's how to join the iLoveMountains.org Blogger's Challenge:

1. Go to ilovemountains.org/bloggers-challenge and enter your name, blog URL and email address.
2. Create a personalized "Spread the Word" widget to embed on your blog.
3. Track anyone who "Spreads the Word," or joins the Blogger's Challenge from your web page, or blog on your personal impact map.
4. Read what other bloggers are writing about mountaintop removal on the Blogger's Challenge "White Pages."

As of this writing, 172 bloggers have joined the iLoveMountains.org Blogger's Challenge. Here are posts by a few of them:

Little Green Animals
Life in Small Bites Environment Blog
faithfull on the Daily Kos
STOP Mountaintop Removal Coal Mining