On mountaintop removal: “I think a lot of the land apparently is quite desirable once it’s been flattened out…. I don’t think anyone’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there”
Sure the WashPost mocked Sen. James Inhofe (R-OIL) as “the last flat-earther.” But that was a purely metaphorical description of the pro-pollution right-winger. Turns out U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul’s (R-KY) actually thinks a lot of Kentucky would be “quite desirable” if it were literally flattened by big coal.
The scientific reality is quite different — see Science bombshell explodes myth of clean coal: Mountaintop “mining permits are being issued despite the preponderance of scientific evidence that impacts are pervasive and irreversible and that mitigation cannot compensate for losses.”
TP has the amazing video and story of a candidate who is an apologist for the biggest of polluters:
One of the themes of U.S. Senate candidate Rand Paul’s (R-KY) campaign has been that businesses are burdened with overregulation, with Paul even decrying the anti-discrimination provisions imposed on private businesses in the Civil Rights Act.
Now, Crooks and Liars has unearthed an interview Rand Paul gave in 2009 where the candidate aired these strident views with respect to mountaintop removal. When asked about the environmentally disastrous process, Paul told the interviewer that he thinks “whoever owns the property can do with the property as they wish, and if the coal company buys it from a private property owner and they want to do it, fine.” To justify his hands-off approach to environmental regulation, Paul then went on to explain that mountaintop removal isn’t that bad, anyway, saying, “I don’t think anybody’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there”:
INTERVIEWER: What about mountaintop removal?
PAUL: I think whoever owns the property can do with the property as they wish, and if the coal company buys it from a private property owner and they want to do it, fine. The other thing I think is that I think coal gets a bad name, because I think a lot of the land apparently is quite desirable once it’s been flattened out. As I came over here from Harlan, you’ve got quite a few hills. I don’t think anybody’s going to be missing a hill or two here and there.
The image at the top — “a satellite-taken before-and-after image of a mountaintop removal site” in WV — illustrates the reality.
As the Wonk Room’s Brad Johnson has pointed out, “Mountain-top mining has been more accurately described as the ‘rape of Appalachia,’ as rural communities are destroyed economically and environmentally for coal industry.”
The scientific reality of MTR is very different than Paul’s eupehmistic assertions. A January article in the journal Science, “Mountaintop Mining Consequences” (subs. req’d) on mountaintop mining with valley fills (MTM/VF) analyzed “current peer-reviewed studies and of new water-quality data from WV [West Virigina] streams.” It revealed “serious environmental impacts that mitigation practices cannot successfully address” and concluded:
Considering environmental impacts of MTM/VF, in combination with evidence that the health of people living in surface-mining regions of the central Appalachians is compromised by mining activities, we conclude that MTM/VF permits should not be granted unless new methods can be subjected to rigorous peer review and shown to remedy these problems. Regulators should no longer ignore rigorous science.
Politicians should no longer ignore rigorous science either.
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MTR, fracking, oil spills, mine explosions, Republican flip-flops on gov’t intervention, pollution, plutocracy, global warming . . . if a guy wasn’t careful he could start getting angry.
So Rand Paul believes that “liberty” means the liberty to be poisoned to death by toxic pollution, and that the proper response of government to those who profit from poisoning us should be to “leave them alone”.
I wonder, are there any self-proclaimed “libertarian” politicians who are NOT bought-and-paid-for corporate stooges spouting pseudo-ideological gibberish to bamboozle gullible dupes?
Dear God. However I say let’s keep sticking a microphone in this guy’s face!
“Businesses over-burdened with regulation?” It wasn’t true when Reagan was first recruited in the 70s to make speeches for corporations, it isn’t true and it hasn’t been true in between.
What is true is that regulation at all levels falls hardest on small business because they usually have to deal with county, state and federal stuff, with no help. On the other hand big corporations can hire the expertise to deal with all paperwork plus lobby and support politicians to get the rules written just the way they want.
Part One of that para is why the GOP has support among many small business types but it’s like Lucy and Charlie Brown and the football. How come they haven’t figured out yet that nothing changes for them even after 8 years of GOP rule.
Everybody who expresses such a “let business do whatever they want” view should be forced to live with the consequences. So, if Rand Paul thinks that MTR isn’t bad, he should live next to an MTR-site, drink the contaminated water coming out of the faucets and eat the poisoned fish from formely clean streams. Others, who think and say that the oilspill in the gulf isn’t bad (the ocean is large….) should be forced to swim around in the oily substance formerly known as water.
What’s the saying? “The stupid. It hurts”?
Flash floods in Oklahoma City, OK. today.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37687237/ns/weather/?GT1=43001
Can the people get the two senators from Oklahoma to sit down and “Listen” to a tutorial on the connection of violent weather events and increased Green House Gas? It would seem to me that would be a reasonable request. I could easily envision that both have lead such insulated lives that neither has been subject to more scientific knowledge than can be learned from F*X News.
I would think the flash flooding in the heart of the state might instill a new urgency in understanding science.
“Libertarianism. A simple-minded right-wing ideology ideally suited to those unable or unwilling to see past their own sociopathic self-regard.”
Rand Paul can’t have it both ways: If, in a perfect world, business was “left alone from government”, then there could be no mountaintop mining-the first property owner who objected to his/her property being destroyed and who didn’t want a buy out would have stopped the whole thing. This is a question of the kind of governmental interference we want: The kind that supports powerful money interests, or the kind that supports health, environment, and long term economic sustainability.
And I’m sure he also believes the Gulf is much prettier with that shiny oily sheen it has now …
I think Rand Paul should be asked if someone driving 90 miles an hour down the street on which he lives who hits and kills someone should be excused from his “accident?”
Well, Science magazine warned America and the world about the coming dangers of global greenhouse warming more than 20 years ago. I don’t know that the MTR people read Science magazine or will stop without the law telling them to quit.
Remember all the silly talk immediately post 9/11 about humor or irony being dead? I’m beginning to think that with people like Rand Paul and his sycophants running around making it just a little bit harder every day to do what science tells us we need to do to serve our own best interests, we may actually reach that stage.
“The image at the top — “a satellite-taken before-and-after image of a mountaintop removal site” in WV — illustrates the reality.”
If you keep in mind that this mountain was removed so people could heat and power their homes and businesses, the reality looks pretty good. After all, millions of years from now erosion will have a similar flattening affect – without generating power for homes and businesses.
Michael W #12
expells more methane to keep those gas fired power generating plants going.
By your measure MTR provides more loverly golf courses, doh!
Have a read of Jeff Goodell’s ‘Big Coal: The Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future’ sir and then put your thinking hat on.
Michael W, please tell us how many people in the US in 2010 heat their home by burning coal?
I hear this nonsense point offered up over an over. No one has yet been able to answer that question.
Michael W (#12 – and I’m guessing that this is not Mike Roddy):
Millions of years from now our species will have lived out the life expectancy of most large mammals and go extinct. But let’s bring about that extinction now, and we’ll generate some electricity in doing so.
Michael W wrote: “If you keep in mind that this mountain was removed so people could heat and power their homes and businesses, the reality looks pretty good.”
You don’t live in Appalachia, do you? Aesthetics aside, if you lived near that mountain you probably would have to put up with coal dust all over your house, every day. The dust would come from trucks hauling the bitumin hell bent for leather down country roads, or from the coal tipple that fills the trucks. Many of those dust particles would fall below the ten-micron limit that makes them dangerous to breathe.
If you lived outside city limits, you’d probably hunt and fish. You might collect and sell local herbs. Except that there would be no fish and game, or local herbs, due to the mining activity. Also, the water in your well might not be fit to drink.
A dam holding back millions of gallons of slurry left from washing the coal might loom over your property, or over the school where your children learn how beneficial the coal-mining industry is.
This is the reality in large parts of Appalachia. It’s not so good.
Not being from Kentucky, I would normally watch such a race from afar. However, if R. Paul’s opponent has anything at all to recommend him, I will be sending his some money this fall.
Perhaps the best that can come from this is that even some thinking conservatives will distance themselves from such a philosophy.
Also @Michael,
Mountain top removal is largely a corporate method to lower labor costs. While I can’t really comment on the safety of MTR vs. “pit” mining for laborers, MTR has greatly reduced the number of coal miners: one of the reasons areas like WV remain so depressed. Thus cries of “we need MTR, or our communities will lose jobs” are misplaced. The corporations already eliminated those jobs to reduce costs.
Perhaps it is true that we all face choices — and that we cannot have both hydropower and salmon, irrigated wine from Mendocino and the Eel River, coffee from Latin America and intact communities — but if there are no shades of gray, do you really want your legacy to be that belongings are more important than belonging? If there are shades of gray, wouldn’t it be better to leave wilderness intact, to minimize pollution, and to provide more jobs for the community?
In reply to Jime Eager- few people heat their homes DIRECTLY by coal burning, but 50% of all electricity in the US is generated by coal burning
I think Rand Paul is turning into a weekly . By the end of this election cycle I fear I will have a permanent red, hand shaped slap mark on my forehead.
That was supposed to say “a weekly =facepalm=”
The unfettered free market is a religion with these people. This is their God, and they have no other.
Unfortunately giving large corporations the charter to only make money for their stockholders with no concern for any living thing or public good has created literal monsters that are devouring us in countless ways, from MTR to the BP oil spill to the Massey coal mine disaster to the incredibly under-reported recent natural gas pipeline explosion (I guess so that the fossil fuel industries could say they hit for the cycle) to peak oil and climate change.
In addition to giving eye surgery maybe if Paul received this service from someone unlicensed he’d see (or not) that suing them is no solution, while the best licensing and regulation is extremely important.
We need all the best, most up-to-date, intelligent, caring regulation and enforcement we can get. Somehow small business needs to be encouraged when there are no environmental, animal or human exploitation negatives, while larger corporations are increasingly reigned in as their profits and size increase.
And by the way, how much of a critical thinker can someone be who buys into their father’s entire ideology hook, line and stinker?
That image looks like a lot of carbon sink is missing.
Many people in West Virginia hate mountaintop removal mining, and I would think even more would feel this way in Kentucky, which is less dependent on the coal industry.
Kentucky is less ignorant than a lot of people think, in spite of Bunning and McConnell. Hunter Thompson and Muhammed Ali came from Louisville.
The Democrats could take this seat, which, by nature of its being in the “cultural conservatives” backyard, would have huge symbolic value. Let’s see if they pick up the ball here.
Alan McIntire, I am quite aware of the fact that 50% of US electricity is generated by the combustion of coal, but Michael W specifically stated “this mountain was removed so people could heat” their homes, an assertion that I have heard/read numerous times. Since, as you just acknowledged, very few people heat their homes directly with coal any more, that leaves those who heat their homes with electrical baseboard resistance systems. And since 50% of US electrical generation comes from non-coal sources, not all of those people would be heating their home with coal even indirectly.
So I’ll ask again, how many people depend on coal to heat their home?
JIm Eager, if by Constitutional Amendment, every home in America were required to be heated with coal. it would only be a few years until that Amendment was repealed. If Americans were forced to bring that nasty stuff into their homes and smell the smoke and deal with the ash and clinkers, they’d quickly know how toxic this fuel is and why it should be outlawed for home use and carefully regulated for industrial and utility applications. Keep coal in the ground the way Nature intended.
Catman, I quite agree that coal not only should but must be kept in the ground. I’m challenging the oft-heard meme that anyone in the US is dependent on coal to heat their home. It is nonsense.
My only comment on this video of Rand Paul is: un-freaking-believable!
Libertarianism is a wonderful philosophy if you are a mountain man living on the frontier. Seriously though, the problems we are facing today are a collective threat and require a collective response. In this government is indispensable.
Libertarianism is not up to that challenge.
Michael W wrote: “After all, millions of years from now erosion will have a similar flattening affect – without generating power for homes and businesses.”
After all, decades from now you will die of old age, so it’s no big deal to you if you die in a car crash tomorrow. Right?
SecularAnimist, are you suggesting we are killing mountains?
No, we’re just killing mountain ecosystems.
Jim Eager please attempt a little intellectual honesty. 50% of the US benefiting from coal electricity generation is a lot of people. Restricting our electricity generation options will drive up cost, correct? Those costs will be pushed down to the consumer. That means it will hurt the poor fool flipping a light switch or adjusting the thermostat. There may be reasons for banning MTR, but human welfare is not one of them.
Jim Eager, Do you realize how many ecosystems were destroyed for your house to be built? For the road your drove to work on? For your office building? For the computer you are now sitting in front of? We are carbon based life forms, and require resources to exist. There is no way to not have an impact on our environment. To embrace your views is to embrace hypocrisy.
Michael W wrote: “There may be reasons for banning MTR, but human welfare is not one of them.”
Please enlighten us. What other reasons for banning MTR do you contemplate?
Michael W wrote: “We are carbon based life forms, and require resources to exist. There is no way to not have an impact on our environment.”
But there are ways to minimize the harmful impact we, in our billions, have on our environment. You, apparently, place no value in that environment except as a substrate on which to build houses and drive cars — and from which to extract coal, oil and other minerals until they are used up.
Chris Winter,
1. Demonize modern society
2. Have total disregard/disrespect for our environment
Are these seriously your only two choices? What did your mother teach you about balance?
“Please enlighten us. What other reasons for banning MTR do you contemplate?”
Are there legit reasons for banning MTR? I am giving the author of this post the benefit of the doubt.
Intellectual honesty?
It was you, Michael W, who asserted “this mountain was removed so people could heat …. their homes.”
I called you out on that assertion and challenged you to tell us how many people rely on coal to heat their homes.
You have failed to do so, and instead try to side step the challenge by claiming that MTR is justified because humans are “carbon based life forms, and require resources,” an argument that can just as easily be used to justify and excuse the debacle in the Gulf.
You wouldn’t know intellectual honesty if it bit you.
The mountain was removed so the mining company can make a larger profit than they could by mining the coal using other methods. This works out because the mining companies (and the consumers of the energy) rarely have to pay for most of the downstream damage caused by their activities. This includes the climate costs, which are common to all coal mining methods, and the more direct environmental impacts, which are particularly large for MTR.
To say that the mountain had to be removed to heat the homes of hard-working Americans is just silly. And to say that using other methods to mine the coal or other sources of energy would be more expensive ignores, at least in part, the external costs that are not figured into the price of the energy derived from coal and especially coal mined using MTR.
–MartinJB
MartinJB, are you saying that forcing mining companies into more expensive mining operations will make energy less expensive for the consumer?
What are you reading?
I’m suggesting that there are a lot of externalities that distort the price of energy in this country. The true price of MTR-mined coal is rather higher than the consumer pays directly. Local communities pay the immediate environmental costs. Future generations also pay for the environmental destruction. The whole world will pay for the climate impacts.
MartinJB agreed. I’m looking for a general rule to build policy on. Do you agree with me, that in the short term, the more you scarce energy is, the more it will cost the end user?
Cheap energy is energy that will be used inefficiently at best and outright wasted at worst.
If you want to take a particularly un-nuanced and short-term view on policy, then that is reasonable, if trivial, conclusion.
Michael W, @41: Expense for consumers can be measured in many ways. You appear to be stuck on money. What you fail to value is the real price that you are paying for your coal product. When your extraction methods leave a trail of environmental destruction in their wake, eventually you run out of places of refuge. Your denial of the obvious and proven facts of serious and non-reversible damage to earth’s life support systems does not change the outcome one iota. Death to a large portion, perhaps most, if not all of earth’s higher life forms. I would think that a bit of money invested up front would be a wise investment. I hope President Obama agrees with me.
Leif, if you want Obama to tell the people, “the economy/consumers will have to take a hit in the short term” he will not pass an energy bill. Especially in this economy.
Yes, I am stuck on money. What is money to you? To me it is jobs, housing, food, healthcare, human welfare.
For someone claiming to be interested in developing policy you seem to be rather unable to grasp the trivial.
Fossil fuels being relatively inexpensive encourages their use, thus it also encourages the harmful side effects of their use.
But fossil carbon fuels are relatively inexpensive precisely because most of the cost of those harmful effects, from extraction to dealing with the products of combustion, are externalized. Neither the producer nor the consumer pay for them directly, so the commons ends up doing so.
Keeping fossil fuels inexpensive therefore makes no sense. Forcing those external costs to be included in the price of burning those fuels will dissuade people from using them AND at the same time reduce the relative cost of renewable and non-fossil energy sources and encourage investment in their development and implementation.
Would the net result be higher energy cost? Yes, indeed it will, but then the actual true cost of fossil fuel energy is already substantially above its current monetary value.
Then one day I say the local firemen standing out on the street
corner telling that if they didn’t get the money that fire service
would be hurt. They were in the rural area and so of course they had to drive their personal trucks to tell of the plight. There were three
firemen and each had a at least $30 thou. super new pickup with the
super fine paint job. You know on a good day it could get maybe 18
mpg if they took it easy. Gees they must be having it hard.
Michael W, @47: Are you suggesting that the American people are too dense to understand that sometimes you have to make sacrifices now to ensure a better future?
MartinJB, I’m saying the American people are too smart to fall for hyperbole and sensationalism. They know, for instance, that the before/after image at the top of the page is misleading. It’s meant to generate an emotional response. What will the mining site look like after reclamation efforts have taken place? That would be a true ‘after’ image, since regulations mandating reclamation are the norm.
It will look like a rolling plateau of monoculture grass species where there was once a mature mixed species hardwood forest, meaning there will be a net increase in atmospheric carbon entirely aside from that produced from burning the exposed coal. It will look like debris choked water courses and disrupted aquifers.
Jim Eager, take a look at the satelite photos of the towns around this WV mining site. You will find disruption of nature spread accross these mountains. Imagine before/after photos of these towns. Disruption of nature is nothing new. The thinking man carefully weighs the costs, and this is why MTR is allowed in the US.
Michael W, @51: “MartinJB, I’m saying the American people are too smart to fall for hyperbole and sensationalism.” Funny. That’s not at all what you said. But OK. Moving goalposts is nothing new in these discussions.
With MTR, reclamation can not correct for the massive environmental disruption. You’re not just moving a little earth and cutting down some trees. You’re losing waterways. You’re permanently changing the topology of the landscape. The habitat is not going to return to anything like what it was in any kind of reasonable timeframe.
If you think that is accounted for in the approval of MTR, you’re living in a fantasy world. As mentioned earlier, pricing of energy resources is massively distorted. And we’re not even getting to the lack of carbon pricing.
MTR is a travesty.
MartinJB, how about a little perspective. You say MTR is a travesty because we are: losing waterways, changing topology, altering habitats. Why pick on MTR? Our highway system does all this and more. Same for hydro power, housing subdivisions, city waterfronts, canal digging, etc. Not to mention volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods. I need help making sense of the anti-MTR group. Is it a club for certain personality types, maybe people driven by emotion?
MartinJB, how about a little perspective. You say MTR is a travesty because we are: losing waterways, changing topology, altering habitats. Why pick on MTR? Our highway system does all this and more. Same for hydro power, housing subdivisions, city waterfronts, canal digging, etc. Not to mention volcanoes, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods. I need help making sense of the anti-MTR group. Is it a club for certain personality types, maybe people driven by emotion?