The struggle over mountain-top removal coal mining is more than a struggle over energy, between the coal of the past and the green energies of the future; it is also a struggle over economies. It is a struggle between a paleotechnic economy and a neotechnic economy. In West Virginia, mountain-topping destroys more than the mountain top. It also destroys the valleys--the hollows--that score the mountains and define the differences between mountains. Residue from mountain top mining fills up the valleys, destroys their culture and livelihoods. There has to be an alternative economy for West Virginia and the other Appalachian lands sacrificed to mountain-topping. Farming, tourism, small manufacturing industry, remote services ... whatever a free economy could invent for rural America. It is this alternative economy, not simply alternative energy, that is the issue. And an alternative economy for rural America has been an issue since the decline of rural America began after World War I.
See the New York Times news story: A Fight For A Mountain Top.
The Library of Congress ethnographic collection, Tending the Commons: Folklife and Landscape in Southern West Virginia, provides a richer examination of what is at stake in mountain-topping.
(H/T A.T.)
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