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2009 | Art, Photography & Fashion | Essays
The Appalachian mountain range is the oldest in the world and it's disappearing one mountain top at a time. Plundering Appalachia takes a bold look at the out-of-control strip mining in the American heartland and its threat to our environment.
The Appalachians are the oldest mountains in the world, and they are literally disappearing. The term "mountaintop removal mining," coined to describe the coal-mining process currently at work in much of Appalachia, is in reality, exactly what the name suggests: a mountain, formed over millions of years, is decapitated with explosives--the "overburden" scraped into adjacent valleys--and the exposed coal collected. No living thing survives this "removal," and if the land is replanted, its ecosystem will be nothing like that of the ancient mountaintop it previously held. The process is not only destructive and toxic, but ultimately unsustainable: not one of the four hundred plus mountains blasted has yet grown back.
Tom Butler
(Author)
| Published by | Earth Aware Editions |
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