has more on the issue.

This is absolutely ridiculous. Mountain top removal for mining practices is the worst idea. Not only does this type of mining devastate the local communities that will have to deal with debris and pollutants in their drinking water and food, but it will also drastically change the environment of that area. This practice is simply to change gears and move away from dependence on foreign oil, but there are better ways. We are in a progressive era where the environment should be our top priority. NO NEED FOR OIL or for COAL and mountain top removal practices. Biofuel and water, wind, solar and hydrogen energy are a few methods that will not only help the environment, but it is also cost effective. I find it strange that in 2000 Bush ran under the stance that he was pro environment. However, after he got elected he was quoted as saying, “…environmentalism is 1970’s era thinking…”. Shortly after this comment he cut funding and spending on the environment. Shouldn’t this man be held responsible for deceiving the people and running under a false stance?

The timing seems almost perfect, what with the trapped miners from a couple weeks ago.
"You mean all we have to do is blow the tops of mountains to get to the good stuff? Hooray!"

- If the trout are lost, smash the state!

"Spurlockville, WV" on Google maps for an example of the results.

The great global coal rush puts us on the fast track to irreversible disaster

The Guardian, Comment is Free, By John Harris, August 30

The dirtiest fossil fuel of all is on the resurgent, dressed in climate-friendly garb. We'd be wise not to flirt with it.

With that briefly infamous field in Middlesex now restored to suburban anonymity and the cadres of the Camp for Climate Action presumably considering their next move, the airwaves and news wires once again carry a depressingly familiar sound. Last week, the actress and alleged green convert Sienna Miller did the radio and television rounds, refusing to countenance the idea of reducing her air travel but advising the public to turn down their central heating. We now learn that the BBC has been planning Planet Relief, an eco-telethon set to feature tireless environmental campaigners such as Ricky Gervais and Jonathan Ross. Meanwhile, David Cameron is apparently preparing to add to the noise by returning to his own eternally confused kind of greenery.

If any credible environmentalist should be speaking the hardened language of priorities, one much-overlooked story surely deserves a lot more attention: what may soon be known as the new coal rush, and developments so at odds with the imperatives of climate change that they suggest a fast track towards irreversible disaster. The ubiquitous reduction of green politics to ethical consumerism means we'd probably rather carry on talking about cars, thermostats and lightbulbs. Faced with a resurgence that spans most of the planet, even the most righteous green activist could be forgiven for feeling powerless. No matter; what with skyrocketing gas prices and the fractious state of geopolitics, the stuff responsible for a quarter of the world's CO2 emissions is on a roll, which surely represents our biggest environmental headache of all.

China, that rapidly advancing dystopia where rivers run black and miners are killed at the rate of 5,000 a year (witness this month's coverage of the 180 trapped and probably killed in Shandong province, and the two brothers who dug their way out of a collapsed shaft near Beijing), is building an average of two coal-fired power stations a week, and in six years has doubled its annual coal production. India will construct more than 100 coal-fired plants over the next decade. Panicked by the possible policy repercussions of George Bush's departure, US power corporations are desperately pushing ahead with plans for about 150 coal-fired stations and leaning hard on presidential candidates - as evidenced by Rudy Giuliani's recent suggestion that the US should "increase our reliance on coal".

Moreover, the new coal rush is truly global: in the next five years, 37 countries - among them plenty of Kyoto signatories - will build additional coal-fired capacity, while world coal production heads towards a peak that will apparently materialise in about 25 years' time.

[...]

Even on the most optimistic projections, CCS [Carbon Capture and Storage] won't become viable on any convincing scale until well after 2030...

[...]

The essential point is this. Carbon capture might have some appeal as a means of managing the emissions of a coal industry that could thereby be slowly scaled down, but it is currently being transformed into the justification for a hair-raising level of expansion. Besides, as things stand, the vast majority of the world's coal-fired newbuild - including those power stations due to be constructed in the US - will not even be CCS compatible.

So, faced by a world apparently gone coal-mad, what to do? Britain's best bet would be to make a modest stand for environmental best practice and leave King Coal and his deathly, dystopian ways well alone. You cannot badger people into recycling, composting and fretting about their footprint while prolonging the hegemony of the dirtiest fossil fuel of all. To pilfer the name of the ethical consumer's favourite indulgence, the future can't be both green and black.