Mountaintop Apocalypse: Coal Mining and the Destruction of Rural America

I wrote this a while back, and it somehow got saved as a draft instead of posting. So here it is...

I finally got to watch the Focus Earth episode about mountaintop coal mining this morning. That was a quick way to run my blood pressure up. The West Viginia mountains are home to the richest vein of coal in the country, and coal companies are blasting the hell out of the area to get to it. The issue has recently come to the forefront because of famous activists such as Darryl Hannah, but people in the WV hills have been dealing with it for years.

According to the coal companies, they're doing the people of WV and the nation a favor by supplying the fossil fuel, and in some ways, they're almost right. Extremely rural areas of the South are notoriously underdeveloped, and coal mines do provide jobs for some. However, even if they are providing some form of employment, is it worth the consequences? Areas near the mines are covered in coal dust, which causes chronic health problems for the residents. Toxic sludge pollutes the water and land. Not to mention what it's doing to that stretch of the Appalachians. Then you have the problem of what the coal is being mined for...Coal-powered power plants spew tons of pollutants into our air everyday, but instead of weaning the industry from coal, more coal-powered plants are being built all the time. And it isn't just the immediate areas around the plants that are suffering. Polluted air travels well away from the area causing acid rain, which destroys forests, lakes, wildlife, you name it.

So what's the solution? Companies claim that if mining stopped tomorrow, the towns would lose half their population because people would leave for work. I can't argue with that; as I said, the rural South has little development to speak of. Build solar cell factories there, recycling plants, green businesses...you'd give the people sustainable green jobs and eliminate the problems of coal mining--health and otherwise.

Trust me on this: destroy the rural areas of this country, and the rest will follow.

Adventures of a New Vegetarian, Episode 2: I Can Has Chick'n Fingers?

I went to Publix this morning to pick up a few things and found a fabulous. First, Green Giant has these individual trays of broccoli and cheese, corn, and something else, which are perfect for us since we can't cook like we'd like to. I'd rather not use the plastic even though we recycle, but to have veggies when we want, I'll try to cut plastic somewhere else. Anyway, I decided to try Morningstar Farms vegetarian Chick'n Fingers. Pretty awesome! They actually tasted almost exactly like cheap frozen chicken fingers. Admittedly, given the choice, most people would choose organic chicken breast tenders over cheapo chicken fingers, but you eat whatcha got. If you are going to be vegetarian and like chicken, these are perfect. Sadly, I realized that Stouffer's cheddar potato bake, which I love, has bacon in it. It's weird. I've eaten it a hundred times and never paid any attention to the fact that there was bacon...

One last annoyance from our grocery adventures...everyone who knows me knows I love potatoes, and I seek out anything made with them. I especially love potato soup. Unfortunately, most canned potato soups tend to have bacon in them. (Apparently bacon is my new nemesis.). When I saw the Campbell's Select Harvest potato soup without bacon, I was happy...until I checked the ingredients. Chicken! Anna said it was probably chicken broth, but why in blue hell would you put chicken in potato soup? Seriously...

Stay tuned for more Adventures of a New Vegetarian...same veggie time, same veggie station...

Making the Less-Convenient Choice

I just skimmed an article at the Huffington Post about the rising cost of obesity-related health care. The article itself, what I read of it, wasn't that bad, but I'm pissed. In all of these articles and news reports castigating overweight people, no one ever talks about two issues that are very much behind the problem: poverty and the culture of convenience we have here in the U.S. I've blogged a ton about poverty, but this whole convenience thing has been bothering me a lot lately.
Fast food and junk food are a huge part of people's diets here in the U.S. I should know; they've always been a part of mine. While much of the reason is it just tastes good, the bigger part is that it's easy. It's a hell of a lot easier to go through a drive-thru or pop a pizza in the microwave than to actually cook something healthy. Again, I should know. It actually takes thought to go to the store and choose organic, vegetarian, and otherwise healthy food. And most people here don't do that.

If it was made easier and more affordable to eat healthy, people would be healhier. Yes, exercise is important. Hell, we'd rather watch the biggest loser or dance your ass off than actually do the stuff they're doing on the shows. However, you can exercise all day, but if what you're eating is unhealthy, you're gonna be unhealthy.

(By the way, a fabulous side effect of eating organic and/or vegetarian and vegan is that you reduce your carbon footprint like crazy...)

What people need to start doing is making the harder choices. If you have the money, eat organic. Buy the organic free range chicken and cook your own chicken nuggets. Or even better, if you can, go vegetarian. The problem for the people who can afford it is learning to do what might be less convenient, but for a lot of people, it's making it affordable and available. I couldn't have gone organic in Thomasville, except for whatever veggies I got from my father-in-law, even if I'd had the money. Make vegetarian and organic as accessible as mcdonald's to the general population, you save health in the U.S. and the planet in the process...

A little scattered, but I'm just sayin...

Gone Veggie..Adventures of a New Vegetarian, Prologue

Yeah, so I finally decided that I could not ignore my conscience anymore, and I became a vegetarian. Unlike the last couple of times I've tried to go veggie, I haven't been craving the stuff I "can't" have. Yet...we'll see how it goes, but so far, I'm doing pretty good...I tried chocolate soy milk, which I can definitely add to my fridge, but I don't know about regular soy milk. For the things I'm not losing--eggs and dairy products--we're buying organic, which we've mostly been doing for a while. No matter what, at least I'm reducing my carbon footprint and, most importantly, animals are not dying for me to eat. I just hope I stick with it this time.

Too Lazy to Be Green

So, most of you know that I try to be as green as I possibly can. I am certainly no Ed Begley, Jr., and there are a lot of things that I could probably do better. But I'm getting better as time goes on. Most of you also know that Anna and I live with my family while I am going to school. A few weeks ago, the landlord came out here and did some yard work and happened to move a recycling bin next to the back steps. I had no idea, but the bill for trash pickup includes recycling pickup as well! We can recycle cardboard, plastic, glass, aluminum and tin cans, magazines...basically pretty much anything. We've been living here for almost 2 years, and not once has my mother mentioned the recycling--except for coke cans, which they get money for. When I asked her about it, she said they were just too lazy to deal with it. OMFG Okay, the back steps are right outside the kitchen door--literally a door and about 5 steps from the kitchen trash can. It is absolutely ridiculous that people are too lazy to do these things. They are not difficult or expensive at all. Not everyone has the money to go out and buy a Prius or build an eco-friendly house (we certainly don't), but there is no effin reason you can't take a plastic bottle or tin can a couple more feet to a recyclin bin. NONE. It's already being paid for, so in fact, you are wasting money by not using the service...

just needed to let that out...

damn the man

okay, can we talk about elitist corporate waste for just a minute...on magnolia and park avenue there was this little house that anna was obsessed with...and honestly, it was a perfectly nice little house...it didn't appear to have anything seriously wrong with it, but it was apparently abandoned...so someone bought the property and TORE THE HOUSE DOWN...they're building something as yet unannounced, but the point of the matter is that it was a perfectly serviceable house. there was no functional reason to tear it down except that it didn't fit the layout of whatever useless redundant corporate crap they wanna put there...it just irks me no end to see something that so many people need destroyed for no good reason...*sigh* i hate waste

Hoarding Intervention! or the Minor Paper Purge and the Larger Purge to Come

Tomorrow there’s an earth day related free community shredding/recycling event at the police station. So, Anna had jury duty today, and even though I have three final papers to write, I decided to stay home and clear out some of the backed up paper in our room. I went through the file crate and the gargantuan stack of articles and crap that five semesters in an OCD home will create and came up with two reusable shopping bags full of paper. The fact that I was able to get that much and manage not to have some sort of panic attack (YET) is phenomenal. Usually, I would have been digging through the bags pulling “important and irreplaceable” documents from the jaws of doom. Yay me…a sign of the OCD getting better? Maybe, or maybe just a short respite.

Today was simply a precursor to the major purge happening next weekend (Goddess willing and the creek don’t rise) in which we will be going through every nook and cranny of our incredibly small and way overstuffed room and purging our lives of all the unnecessary and unused stuff we have accumulated.

All of this is, of course, related to the relatively low-grade hoarding (compared to other symptoms) that accompanies the rest of my OCD insanity. There are other, non-OCD reasons I hold on to, well, everything, including childhood traumas and incessant moving, but it hasn’t really been all that serious (again, YET). But I have a thing about holding onto every single paper relating to school, and there are so many bags, purses, and wallets in the closet that I cannot begin to explain it. The bookshelf, as usual, is a monstrosity. Unfortunately, we don’t have the time to mount a yard sale, so the books will be traded to powell’s.com, paperback rack, and my favorite books and the other random stuff will likely go to the refuge house thrift store. I think once we clear the mountains of clutter out of the cave, I will feel much better and be able to function better in there. The only problem lies in actually convincing myself to get rid of the stuff. Here’s hoping…

water is a right...

i have been doing my level best to be as green as possible in our current living situation. we live with my mom, stepdad, and little brother, none of whom is particularly green-minded. however, we do what we can. i've stopped using plastic bags at the store and started using the reusable kind. i bought a water filter and stainless steel water bottle to cut out the bottled water buying when i'm on campus. in other words, i'm trying. all of this is to say that it aggravates the ever-loving crap out of me when i see companies being willfully anti-earth.

last night, i caught most of flow: for love of water, a fabulous documentary, on sundance. i hate that i missed the beginning and most of the middle, but the parts i saw were enough. the film goes to several places in the world including india and bolivia to investigate what basically amount to abuses of water. in india, coca-cola started bottling and ruined the local water supply within 6 months. the water was so bad that it made your skin itch and burn when used for bathing. they finally ousted the bastards. in bolivia, the world bank threatened to withhold water development grants and other money unless they privatized the nation's water. suez (one of the 3 big private water management companies from europe) took over , and instead of actually building the multi-million dollar treatment facility they claimed to have built, raw sewage was directed into a river which emptied into lake titicaca. closer to home, nestle (owner of pure life, deer park, zephyrhills, and at least 3 more water brands) came into a michigan area and promptly cause water levels to drop to insane points. they also pumped so much in zephyrhills, florida that sinkholes began forming. utter disregard for the land and people on it in the name of profit.

this is not really anything new, unfortunately. but it doesn't mean we shouldn't be pissed...the filmmakers started a petition to add a 31st artcle to the UN's declaration of human rights...

"Everyone has the right to clean and accessible water, adequate for the health and well-being of the individual and family, and no one shall be deprived of such access or quality of water due to individual economic circumstance."

this isn't that hard to understand...despite the fact that many claim not to...go to article31.org and sign the petition...and watch flow...because water is a right, not a privilege.