Daring protests are occurring elsewhere besides Iran.
Jeff Biggers has the details at Huffington Post:
Scaling a towering 20-story dragline (those behemoth stripmining machines that could rip up a Manhattan block in a New York minute) and then unfolding a 15 x 150 foot banner at the Twilight mountaintop removal strip mine in Boone County, West Virginia, they also unveiled a simple message on how the EPA, the Department of Interior and the Council on Environmental Quality can best enforce the Clean Water Act and other environmental laws:
JUST STOP MOUNTAINTOP REMOVAL.
The action launches a dramatic weeklong series of protests at mountaintop removal sites in the West Virginia coalfields that will culminate on June 23rd with a special action in the Coal River Valley area with local coalfield residents, NASA climate scientist James Hansen, actress Daryl Hannah, and 94-year-old former US Representative Ken Hechler, and Rainforest Action Network executive director Michael Brune, among many others.
"It's way past time for civil disobedience to stop mountaintop removal and move quickly toward clean, renewable energy sources," said Judy Bonds, Goldman Environmental Prize winner and co-director of Coal River Mountain Watch of West Virginia. "For over a century, Appalachian communities have been crushed, flooded, and poisoned as a result of the country's dangerous and outdated reliance on coal. How could the country care so little about our American mountains, our culture and our lives?"
Entire post well worth reading.
More on the protest at Mountain Action:
COAL RIVER VALLEY, W. VA.—Moments ago, four concerned citizens entered onto Massey Energy’s mountaintop removal mine site near Twilight WV and have begun to scale a150-foot dragline machine to drop a banner that says, ‘stop mountaintop removal mining.’ The climbers plan to stay on the enormous dragline, a massive piece of equipment that removes house-sized chunks of blasted rock and earth to expose coal, until police arrest them. Equipped with satellites phones and a web camera, the climbers will be available for interviews.
This is the first time a dragline has been scaled on a mountaintop removal site, and marks the latest in a string of increasingly dramatic protests in West Virginia by residents and allies from across the country. This act of protest against mountaintop removal comes just days after the Obama Administration announced a plan to reform, but not abolish, the aggressive strip mining practice.
snip
Every day, mountaintop removal mines use more explosive power than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. Mining companies are clear-cutting thousands of acres of some of the world’s most biologically diverse forests. They’re burying biologically crucial headwaters streams with blasting debris, releasing toxic levels of heavy metals into the remaining streams and groundwater and poisoning essential drinking water. According to the EPA, this destructive practice has damaged or destroyed nearly 2,000 miles of streams and threatens to destroy 1.4 million acres of forest by 2020.
"We are all complicit in mountaintop removal whenever we turn on our lights, and we are all responsible to stop it. Mountaintop removal, the world’s worst strip-mining, is unacceptable. Period." said Rebecca Tarbotton of Rainforest Action Network, a lead supporter of the action today. "This is not a practice that needs to be reformed. It is a practice that needs to be abolished. By sacrificing the Appalachian Mountains for the country’s coal addiction, we undermine future investments in 21st century clean energy solutions that will protect our planet, produce more jobs and preserve our natural resources."
I hope they stay safe and their voices are heard.
This coincides with Sen. Robert C. Byrd sending his staff to tour MTR sites.
Vivian Stockman, an Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition project coordinator, said, "We're extremely grateful to Senator Byrd. It is awfully nice his staff will meet with people directly impacted by mountaintop removal.
"We hope this trip will help Byrd's office understand the huge hidden costs associated with mountaintop-removal coal mining from flooding to lost communities, from lost economic potential of the mountains to the huge costs of poisoned streams and drinking water."
Stockman said no one has yet done a comprehensive study about the human, health and economic costs associated with "this extreme form of coal mining."
See also Clem Guttata's The Economic Case Against Mountaintop Removal.
Update 14 brave activists are now in custody. via Mountain Action.