{"id":1186,"date":"2010-01-28T11:06:08","date_gmt":"2010-01-28T16:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/01\/28\/clean-coal\/"},"modified":"2010-01-28T11:06:08","modified_gmt":"2010-01-28T16:06:08","slug":"clean-coal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/01\/28\/clean-coal\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;clean&#8221; coal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Today is National Coal Ash Action Day, as <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mountainjustice.org\/events.php?id=197\">MountainJustice.org<\/a> reminds us &#8212; see the information <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mountainjustice.org\/events.php?id=197\">there<\/a> on what you can do about it. Meanwhile, <a title=\"Climate Ground Zero\" href=\"http:\/\/climategroundzero.net\/2010\/01\/man-arrested-helping-tree-sit-abuse-of-sitters-continues\/\">Climate Ground Zero<\/a> reports on a fascinating case unfolding in West Virginia&#8217;s coal country, where tree sitters have halted blasting of a mountaintop by Massey Coal company.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/-bMO66ajBN0?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Climate justice folks have taken the old growth forest protection movement&#8217;s most direct form of direct action to a place where it&#8217;s clearly about justice, not just trees (as <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=b6S0AAAAIAAJ&amp;q=appalachian+coal+mountaintop+removal&amp;dq=appalachian+coal+mountaintop+removal&amp;ei=_LFhS6WRDKCSyQSng5n5Dw&amp;cd=5\">so<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=uucDAAAAMBAJ&amp;pg=PA36&amp;dq=appalachian+coal+mountaintop+removal&amp;ei=_LFhS6WRDKCSyQSng5n5Dw&amp;cd=6#v=onepage&amp;q=appalachian%20coal%20mountaintop%20removal&amp;f=false\">many<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.com\/books?id=GyPbVNMZcq0C&amp;dq=appalachian+coal+mountaintop+removal&amp;source=gbs_navlinks_s\">have<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mountaintop_removal_mining\">documented<\/a>, and as Google Earth provides plenty of <a href=\"http:\/\/earth.google.com\/outreach\/cs_app_voices.html\">photographic evidence<\/a> of). A petition to halt the blasting can be found <a href=\"http:\/\/climategroundzero.net\/pettry-petition\/\">here.<\/a> (And reading <a href=\"http:\/\/climategroundzero.net\/2010\/01\/man-arrested-helping-tree-sit-abuse-of-sitters-continues\/\">the comments<\/a> can be a blast as well.)<\/p>\n<p>One of the things I like about that video, incidentally (and ironically), is that it sounds like a piece of ambient drone music by someone like Nurse With Wound or Zoviet France being performed as if it were one of R. Murray Schafer&#8217;s <a href=\"http:\/\/findarticles.com\/p\/articles\/mi_qa3683\/is_199807\/ai_n8785908\/\">outdoor concerts<\/a>, on location <em>where it counts<\/em>. Except that here the horns are being played by real live mining company truckers. And what becomes clear here is that music can be dangerous &#8212; a force of violence, not merely to oneself (when subjecting one&#8217;s eardrums willingly) but to others. Like a lot of art that comments on atrocity, however, the sonic blasting is only a prelude to the physical blasting that awaits the landscape, or a kind of homeopathic substitute for it if the tree sitters succeed in stopping it from getting to the more destructively physical stage.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, President Obama, despite all the good things in his speech last night (which I generally liked a lot, and which helped renew the feelings of admiration I&#8217;ve had for him all along), worryingly <a href=\"http:\/\/www.grist.org\/article\/2010-01-27-in-state-of-the-union-obama-panders-to-conservatives-on-clean-en\/\">continues to dither<\/a> on the energy issue, speaking not only of &#8220;clean coal&#8221; <em>as if it actually existed<\/em> but of off-shore drilling and a whole &#8220;new generation&#8221; of nuclear plants, and not even mentioning sustainable energy once in a speech that should have been a programmatic reframing of reality. I understand (as I think one of the MSNBC commentators mentioned last night) that he was aiming, in part, to take the wind out of any possible response by Virginia&#8217;s governor, who gave the Republication response afterward. But please, we need more pressure on the folks in Washington&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Here&#8217;s an interesting piece on the use of GoogleEarth and GoogleMaps to disclose the reality of the 450+ mountaintops removed to access coal deposits in the United States:<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"500\" height=\"282\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aiSzOiGFa-0?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today is National Coal Ash Action Day, as MountainJustice.org reminds us &#8212; see the information there on what you can do about it. Meanwhile, Climate Ground Zero reports on a fascinating case unfolding in West Virginia&#8217;s coal country, where tree sitters have halted blasting of a mountaintop by Massey Coal company. Climate justice folks have [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[196,692399,691215],"tags":[16850,4448,219,220],"class_list":["post-1186","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ecoculture","category-music-soundscape","category-politics_postpolitics","tag-coal-mining","tag-ecopolitics","tag-energy","tag-obama"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-j8","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1248,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/04\/23\/earth-day-40\/","url_meta":{"origin":1186,"position":0},"title":"Earth Day 40","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 23, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been posting links to Earth Day news in the shadow blog (which you can follow in the column to your right on the Immanence main page). The most interesting news, to my mind, was the initiative for a Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mother Earth and the calls\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Climate change&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8751,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/05\/09\/fort-mcmurray-as-fictive-image\/","url_meta":{"origin":1186,"position":1},"title":"Fort McMurray as fictive image","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 9, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"With reality like this, who needs fiction? https:\/\/youtu.be\/i13EDTnoj1w It's from Fort McMurray, last week. Harrowing. While the impact of such images is undeniable, the debate over whether and how they are related to climate change is a debate the rest of us should not shy away from. Elizabeth Kolbert's piece\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Climate change&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/i13EDTnoj1w\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1254,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/05\/01\/may-day-reports\/","url_meta":{"origin":1186,"position":2},"title":"May Day reports","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"May 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Happy May Day and merry Beltane, to those in a mood to celebrate this weekend. I'm traveling and unable to blog much, but the past week's events warrant at least a quick update on why such a mood might be difficult to sustain with any steadiness. The biggest environmental bad\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Eco-culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"phpThumb_generated_thumbnailjpg.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2010\/05\/phpThumb_generated_thumbnailjpg.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1065,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2009\/04\/29\/obama-as-the-green-fdr-in-the-age-of-swine-flu\/","url_meta":{"origin":1186,"position":3},"title":"Obama as the &#8220;green FDR&#8221; in the age of Swine Flu","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"April 29, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"WorldChanging shares Joe Romm's \"The Green FDR: Obama's First 100 Days Make - and May Remake - History,\" which compiles a nice account from Climate Progress of the good things the Obama administration has done on the environmental front. According to Romm, \"three game-changing accomplishments stand out:\" \"1. Green Stimulus:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Eco-culture&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Eco-culture","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecoculture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Swine-flu-outbreak-in-Mex-001.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2009\/04\/Swine-flu-outbreak-in-Mex-001.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9714,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/06\/15\/skipping-an-earthbeat\/","url_meta":{"origin":1186,"position":4},"title":"Skipping an Earthbeat","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 15, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Reading Bill McGuire's 2012 book\u00a0Waking the Giant: How a Changing Climate Triggers Earthquakes, Tsunamis, and Volcanoes, I came across this description of the annual \"pulse\" called an \"Earthbeat,\" which is supposedly responsible for Earth's preference for volcanic eruptions between November and April (also known as \"volcano season\"): rather like a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Anthropocene&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2018\/06\/The-Four-Worldviews-and-Views-of-Nature-Described-in-the-Cultural-Theory-of-Risk-Figure-275x226.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12459,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2022\/03\/27\/this-is-a-fossil-fuel-war\/","url_meta":{"origin":1186,"position":5},"title":"&#8220;This is a fossil fuel war&#8221;","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 27, 2022","format":false,"excerpt":"The invasion of Ukraine has shifted media attention away from many other things, Covid and climate among them. But the climate implications of the war have not gone unnoticed. To start with the obvious: Russia is a petrostate. As Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air analyst Lauri Myllyvirta\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Climate change&quot;","block_context":{"text":"Climate change","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/climate-politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/03\/climate-fears-on-back-burner-as-fuel-costs-soar-and-russia-crisis-deepens-vMhnq5zQ.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/03\/climate-fears-on-back-burner-as-fuel-costs-soar-and-russia-crisis-deepens-vMhnq5zQ.jpeg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/03\/climate-fears-on-back-burner-as-fuel-costs-soar-and-russia-crisis-deepens-vMhnq5zQ.jpeg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/03\/climate-fears-on-back-burner-as-fuel-costs-soar-and-russia-crisis-deepens-vMhnq5zQ.jpeg?resize=700%2C400&ssl=1 2x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2022\/03\/climate-fears-on-back-burner-as-fuel-costs-soar-and-russia-crisis-deepens-vMhnq5zQ.jpeg?resize=1050%2C600&ssl=1 3x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1186"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1186\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1186"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1186"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1186"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}