Mountaintop removal by WV coal industry in pics by A. Marr
It was early August, 2008. I was on my 6th Compassion for Animals Road
Expedition (CARE-6). "Almost heaven, West Virginia...", emanated my car
stereo when I was cresting the Blue Ridge Mountains and crossing the
Shanandoah River. But then I arrived in Charleston, and a local activist
took me up to the top of a local mountain to show me that it was gone - the
mountaintop, that is. In its place, was a deep crater and enormous piles of
debris down the mountainside. It was a mountaintop removal operation by the
coal mining industry, which should have no place in this critical time of
global climate change in the first place. And the direct devastation to the
environment is incalculable. To say nothing of the destruction of nature as
art created though millions of years.
From the vantague point I could see dump trucks scurrying about on the
crater's rim. Judging by their size I thought it was a big operation but not
huge, until I saw a few half-ton pick-ups parked near one of the dump
trucks, looking like a bunch of Tinker Toys strewn near a Dodge Ram.
When I finally finished my grim photography and looked up from the
devastation, I swept the horizon and the mountaintops all around. My
activist friend said to me, stoically, "They are all doomed to the same
fate."
To see the mountaintop removal operation in pictures for yourself, go to
www.myspace.com/AnthonyMarr --> click "Pics" (just beneath my
cover photo) --> click "Mountaintop removal in WV coal mining".
And, please, do something.
Anthony Marr, founder and president
Heal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
www.HOPE-CARE.org
www.MySpace.com/AnthonyMarr
www.YouTube.com/AnthonyMarr
www.HomoSapiensSaveYourEarth.blogspot.com
www.ARConference.org
216-386-7362 / 604-222-1169
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