Coal Tattoo on Living on Earth
A little shameless self-promotion for everybody’s favorite coal-mining blog …
The folks at Living on Earth were kind enough to have me on their show this week, to discuss all the hubbub over EPA’s actions to start more closely reviewing mountaintop removal permits.
Living on Earth is a weekly environmental news and information program distributed by Public Radio International. Every week approximately 300 Public Radio stations broadcast Living on Earth’s news, features, interviews and commentary on a broad range of ecological issues. The show airs in 9 of the 10 top radio markets and reaches 80% of the US.
The direct link to the mountaintop removal segment is here.
This week’s show also features a piece about the dueling public relations campaigns concerning “clean coal, discussion of the 30th anniversary of Three-Mile Island, and a segment on the lessons learned from Three-Mile Island and the Exxon Valdez oil spill.
Here in West Virginia, the good folks at Public Broadcasting bring us the show at 8 p.m. on Mondays. The rest of you, check it out online, or go here to see when Living on Earth is broadcast at a fine public radio station near you. Or, if you’re like me, you can add it to your iTunes podcasts by clicking here.
1 comment
Great job on the interview. You were right about the jobs that President Obama’s program could bring to put the heavy equipment operators to work repairing the damage of strip mining. Activists really are talking about these jobs being great replacement jobs (instead of strip mining jobs), but just not enough I guess.
We are spending a lot of time documenting and filming the mining impacts we deal with almost daily. We also try to give the communities the tools and agency numbers to call in order to help themselves.
The blasting is getting intense in some local communities and the rsidents are very upset and afraid. Some residents are now having breathing problems for hours after the blasts as the explosives, silica/rock dust settle in/near their homes. What goes up (blast), must come down.
Back about 6 years ago some of my co-workers and I actually talked to some mid level UMWA officials about the possibility of transition jobs ( similar to Obama’s plan) to repair the mining damages but they scoffed and made fun of us -saying
“We don’t think our miners would accept or like those jobs”, we want to mine coal”.
When the AML program was in danger of expiring our groups have worked hard to keep the AML program alive. We knew this work could be transition jobs as well as the great need to clean up the pre 1977 sites.
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