Hill and Holler

In case you missed it, Orion Magazine ran an outstanding package on mountaintop removal mining in its Jan/Feb issue. The main story is by Erik Reece, whose new book Lost Mountain examines the terrible practice of blowing up mountains to get at coal seams and filling river valleys with the rubble and refuse.

That piece is buttressed by photographer Antrim Caskey's portraits of some of the people -- self-described hillbillies -- who have suffered the consequences of what can only be considered an environmental crime of the most brutal nature -- a crime that has been aided and abetted by the Bush Administration and the government agencies that are supposed to regulate the mining industry.

The outrage and despair engendered by their stories is leavened somewhat by an Amory Lovins sidebar in which the energy visionary argues that it doesn't have to be this way.

If coal is responsibly mined and its carbon kept out of the air, it could have a sound long-term future. But even in the short term, mountaintop removal's scalped landscapes and destroyed communities are neither necessary nor economic. America won't need to turn Appalachia upside down if federal energy policy simply allows all ways to save and produce energy to compete fairly at honest prices, no matter which kind they are, what technology they use, how big they are, or who owns them. On such a level playing field, efficiency and some low- or no-carbon electrical generators cost us less than coal's market price (even if its environmental and social costs were zero). Avoiding coal's burdens is not costly; it's profitable.