Sacred Earth: people of faith take on mountain-topping
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Posted on October 30, 2006
Filed Under Justice, Greenhouse gas emissions, Ecological overshoot, Ecological hope, Consumer culture, Fossil fuel dependency, Environmental disasters, Earth spirituality, Renewable fuels, Inspiration and reflection
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
The NY Times had a quite good article on Saturday about how people of faith in Appalachia are discovering the extent to which the mountains are being ravaged by coal companies through the controversial practice of mountain-topping.
We have addressed this issue before in this blog. Mountain-topping involves blasting away the tops of mountains to get to the coal seams below. Companies find this a cheaper, more efficient way to get at coal, the fossil fuel for which demand is growing exponentially in this country.
As if this rape of nature was not bad enough, the mountain debris and toxic waste are dumped into the valleys below, smothering streams, polluting ground water, causing soil erosion and flooding, jeopardizing the health and well-being of the people who live there.
And then there is the beauty of these mountains and the importance of that beauty for the human spirit. It is hard for me to look at the photo on the NY Times page without weeping. I love the Appalachian mountains, the range closest to me. We have spent many wonderful days together over the past 27 years.
Friends in Kentucky had alerted me to the growing involvement of churches in raising awareness of the practice and the growing movement to stop it. Perhaps their most important contribution is just getting people there to see this abomination.
One lone contrary voice is quoted here, a Christian who says of mountain-topping that God put the coal here for our use.
How does he presume to know the mind of God? And whose God is this, the one that gave us nature so that we could destroy it for our use?
Or is nature, perhaps, one of the ways through which we come to the Sacred, in all humility and gratitude, a gratuitous gift of whoever or whatever created us, meant to sustain us in its balance and open up greater possibilities in the evolution of consciousness?
He does make a point, though:
“[God] produced things that we need on this earth. Without coal, you wouldn’t have the warmth and light you have right now.”
Well, certainly not to the current levels of our energy consumption. We do need to continue to devour the earth in order to live like we do — until the earth is used up, and then we are dead.
That is harsh god in which to put one’s faith.
Anyway, the challenge does come back to us. When we turn on a light switch, or get the a.c. going on a hot summer day, something is happening in Appalachia with which we have an intimate, if unseen, relationship. We cannot escape the fact of how our way of life, all this electric power that we assume as a birthright, is destroying these mountains — and many other natural habitats of this earth.
Opposing this violence against nature will require more than political activism. That is essential. But it will also require on our part a willingness to change completely how we are in relationship with nature, which will mean changing those assumptions, beginning immediately to downscale our consumption, reducing our use of energy, developing sources of energy that do not harm the Earth.
Being simple, humble, politically active, spiritually alive.
There is a slide show attached to this NYT article (page 2). Don’t miss it.
Here are some links to more info and resources on mountain-topping.
Mountain Justice Summer - What is mountaintop removal mining?
An article about the work of the Catholic Committee on Apalachia
A Google Earth blog that documents the damage
Ilovemountains - end mountaintop removal coal mining: Action & resource center
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Thanks for this post! The people of the Appalachian coalfields need all the help they can get. Please spread the word to your friends and family to help end moutaintop removal coal mining. Visit www.iLoveMountains.org to find out how. Thanks for caring!