Earth Exploders

Ever heard of MTR?  I hadn’t until a month or so ago.  It stands for a common coal mining technique called Moutaintop Removal, and apparently, over 3 million pounds of ordinance is detonated every day, blowing up entire mountains just to get at a thin layer of coal – to help feed my home electricity.  For a variety of reasons, I’m not at peace with that.

Now, to be sure, every source of energy has its benefits and challenges.  Coal, nuclear, hydro, gas/oil, wind, solar, biomass, and others all have their “issues” to be weighed, and no one particular source is perfect.  There will never be a one-source answer to energy problems.  In fact, the best answer has nothing to do with sources – it is conservation.  If everyone used less energy at home, and took tangible steps away from the consumer lifestyle that demands so much energy use across the country to make “stuff” for us that we don’t really need, there would be far less of a problem at hand.  But more on this another time.  In this post, I’d just like to share a bit of what I’ve been learning about MTR so that you can consider these issues for yourself.

From a website for “Coal Country,” a documentary:  “Most Americans are shocked to learn that nearly half of the electricity used in the United States today is produced by coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel…  The tops of mountains are blasted away, exposing seams of coal, while debris is pushed into valleys and streams. Residents endure health problems, dirty water in their wells, dust and grime on their floors…” (liaisondistribution.com).

Many coal companies bury streams with mountain debris and then plead innocent to polluting the water on the basis of there being no water there anymore.  “To date, the legal system has bought this kind of logic to the tune of twelve hundred miles of vanished streams and rivers in the state of West Virginia alone” (Sleeth, p.13).

Not only are we destroying God’s mountains, forests, valleys, streams, and ecosystems to power our country’s excessive consumer lifestyle, but we’re making people in Appalachia (and all around the world) sick to do it.  Both the human health and the environmental sides of this are equally problematic to me, since the long-term health of people depends on the health of this planet given to sustain us.

“A typical family uses 1,800 pounds of coal per year powering just its electric clothes dryer.  An average of 20,000 pounds of forest, dirt, and rock must be dumped in a stream in order to get that amount of coal.  It is easy to rail against greedy corporations and corrupt judges.  It’s a little harder to actually do something about mountaintop removal by changing our behavior” (Sleeth, p.14).  “Environmental topics can get so politicized and polarizing that we absolve ourselves from personal responsibility” (Sleeth, p.65).

We had already started line drying clothes as part of our household move toward “intentional downward mobility” and increasing conservation, but learning about MTR has helped to solidify the commitment that much more.

Wherever you are on this issue or journey, please know that my intention is to lovingly challenge and encourage.  For example, please do not feel bad, guilty, or defensive if you use a clothes dryer!  That is so not my intention at all.  But please do some prayerful soul-searching on these big-picture issues and how our personal everyday choices help combat or perpetuate the overall societal problems.  And please also be encouraged – you cannot make these changes all in a day and that’s OK.  Lord knows I still have a ton to learn and alter myself!  But challenge yourself to continually learn more and take steps to make changes as you’re able.

These days, you can find energy conservation tips just about anywhere. But one of my favorite resources for everything “green” including energy conservation tips is Nancy Sleeth’s book, “Go Green, Save Green: A Simple Guide to Saving Time, Money, and God’s Green Earth.”

Additional quotes above from Matthew Sleeth’s, “The Gospel According to the Earth.”