Mountaintop Removal, Just Not In the Press and Just Not On Our Minds

I know that this is something that bloggers are loath to admit, but often, particularly when I blog about mountaintop removal mining, the hits I get on this blog can be pretty meager, diving down from dozens or hundreds to only a few hits.

            The reason for this is quite simple. Mountaintop mining is simply not on the minds of most folks. This is due in part at least to the few stories about the mines in the press. In the past 15 years the New York Times ran 40 stories that were about mountaintop removal or mentioned mountaintop removal somewhere in a story.[1] Conversely, over the same period the Times ran 17,158 stories that were about or mentioned Israel.

            Certainly there is much that goes on in Israel that is newsworthy, and on the occasions when there are missiles flying or bombs going off there will be a lot of press coverage of that area of the world. But a scourge on the land and people of Appalachia—one that is occurring within our borders, one that has been investigated by the U.N. for human rights abuses, one which, unlike the politics or conflicts of a country thousands of miles away, we can actually do something about—why does it receive less than 0.3 percent of the coverage of that given to Israel?

            Because of the dearth of press coverage, we just aren’t curious about mountaintop removal and don’t try to find out more about it. Below is a graph showing the searches in Google[2] for mountaintop removal over the last ten years. The graph doesn’t give absolute numbers, but you’ll get my point in the next few graphs. You can see from the graph that interest in mountaintop coal mining peaked around 2010.

 

Goolging of mountaintop removal since 2005

Now take a look at the graph below. It shows the googling of mountaintop removal compared to the googling of fracking. The blue line is the one representing mountaintop removal and the red one is the fracking one. If you think about it, fracking has been in the headlines a lot more than MTR mining. Maybe this can be explained by more compelling and appealing documentaries about fracking. Perhaps the press covers the extractive practice more because more communities are affected by hydraulic fracturing than that of mountaintop removal.

 

Googling of mountaintop removal and fracking since 2005

OK, here’s the kicker. Below is a graph of the googling done on mountaintop removal, fracking, and Taylor Swift, the very popular singer. The line representing her Google searches is the dashed yellow one.

 

Googling of mountaintop removal, fracking, and Taylor Swift since 2005

Wow. The searches on fracking barely resister compared to the ones on Swift, and unless I knew that mountaintop removal was graphed, I would not know it was there.

            I don’t mean to take away from Taylor Swift and her popularity. She brings a great deal of joy to millions. I would like to see peace for the Middle East, and perhaps the press coverage of the region will help bring that about. The same can be said about fracking, that the press coverage and interest in the subject will help us to stop or severely restrict this dangerous extractive practice. But why such miniscule press coverage of the mines that are devastating our Appalachia? Why?

And here's a picture of Taylor Swift, just for good measure. photo: Jason Merritt/Getty Images 

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[1] This search in the Times and other searches were performed using Proquest.

[2] These graphs were generated in Google Trends https://www.google.com/trends/

RAMPS Protests Mountaintop Removal at Alpha, But the Local Press Slants the Story to King Coal

Reading some of the posts to United For Coal’s Facebook page, I am sometimes flummoxed by the amount of support that folks in Virginia, West Virginia, and Kentucky have for the coal companies. Despite the great harm that these companies are doing to the land and people of Appalachia, and despite of the inability or unwillingness of the coal companies to economically benefit the communities of Appalachia where coal is mined, many of the residents voice unwavering support to Arch, Alpha, and other big coal companies.

            True, there are the three important things that the coal companies provide: jobs, jobs, and jobs. But that still doesn’t explain the blind devotion that has Appalachia residents supporting even some of the most egregious mining practices like mountaintop removal.

            Two days ago, five persons associated with the Radical Action for Mountain Peoples' Survival (RAMPS) protested the practice of mountaintop removal coal mining and the building of gargantuan coal slurry impoundments by blocking the entrance driveway to Alpha Natural Resources, a coal company that extracts coal through mountaintop removal. The protesters chained large industrial equipment and themselves to guard railing. They also placed a 250-gallon container of nontoxic black colored water to symbolize the water held in slurry impoundments. All the protesters were freed from the chains by police and arrested. Traffic was restored to the driveway by 10:00 am.

            Now, looking at the reportage of the arrests by a local television station, it’s easy to see the slant that favors the coal companies. Lindsey Price, the journalist for WCYB in Bristol, Virginia, states in her news report:

The five protesters who were strung across the bridge were from a group called Mountain Justice, a group who protests what they refer to as 'mountain top removal' mining.

“What they refer to” designates a word or phrase not used in general parlance but is used by a particular group, such as, “What Catholics refer to as a Holy Day of Obligation.” or “What scientists refer to as a control group.” Some groups will have terms like these to convey a connotation that they want to communicate to the broader populace, such as when the tea party refers to the estate tax as a death tax. Estate tax sounds neutral; death tax sounds bad. You get the idea.

By using this phrase and putting mountain top removal in quotation marks, Price seems to indicate that it is some sort of value-laden bit of rhetoric. This is wrong. The term mountaintop removal has been used by a wide range of folks for years, from those who oppose it to those who favor it, to describe this efficient but destructive mining practice. The term goes back at least to 1997, when Penny Loeb wrote about mountaintop removal in her August 3, 1997 story “Shear Madness” for US News and World Report.

Price failed to mention that the action of civil disobedience by the individuals was additionally to protest the building of coal slurry impoundments. I don’t know why this aspect of the story was left out of her piece of journalism. Slurry impoundments have failed in the past, flooding valleys with toxic slurry to great ecological damage. People have died when coal slurry dams have failed. With that in mind, near the town of Whitesville, federal regulators recently approved the expansion of a slurry dam that would allow it to grow taller than the Hoover Dam. To me, it is a serious omission to her news story.

Also Price limits the narrative of the protest, the bigger picture of the conflict, to one in which a the spokesperson for RAMPS, Emily Keppler makes a statement about the water pollution or the health consequences due to mountaintop mining, only to be answered by the vice president of Alpha, Ted Pile.

"This exact action was to bring, symbolic of course, the impacts of mountain top coal mining to the headquarters to the people who are causing it, but don't have to suffer the consequences of it," said Mountain Justice supporter Emily Keeppler.

Protesters filled a barrel full of concrete, then put a pipe through it and connected themselves all the way across the bridge with chains. When firefighters cut the protesters free it left piles of concrete on the bridge. "They locked themselves to a giant barrel of dirty water to symbolize how Alpha coal is locking Appalachian to dirty water," said Keppler.

Pile told me last year Alpha had a 99.7 percent compliance rate with the water, and they are constantly monitored at the state and federal level. "We're also a highly-regulated industry, probably one of the most regulated industries in the country," said Pile.

The five protesters were arrested, but Keppler says it was worth it because this protest was personal for those who were arrested. "Their health is being compromised, their communities are being compromised, so they're absolutely willing to risk arrest in order to engage in non-violent action to stop this," said Keppler.

Pile tells us they have not received any complaints or science to prove there are health issues. "Out of about 86 million tons of coal we expect to mine this year, only 22, tons come from the type of mining they're objecting to. That'll probably be close to zero next year," said Pile.

This boils the conflict down to a “he said, she said” scenario, in which the truth of the matter—the science being done points to irreparable damage to Appalachian waterways and dire health consequences for those who live in proximity to mountaintop mining— is left out of the picture. Watching the video that was broadcast for this story, the reporter gives a bit of an upper hand to the coal company. After each statement by Keppler, Price begins the retorts by the coal company vice president with “But Price said…” This gives the impression that the vice president is correcting a misstatement or misunderstanding by the RAMPS spokesperson.

So is this why there is so much support for the coal companies in Appalachia? Folks there turn on their televisions and get new reports like this one?

Have You Read the News?

Newspapers have always had sections. There’s always been the business section, a local section, and of course, the sports section. Before the Internet, when papers were the way to get the news, sections were a precursor to the hyperlink. You could find the section that interested you and read about how your stocks were doing, see who was getting married, or just read the comics without having to leaf through a lot of other news that may have been of lesser interest to you. Transitioning to the Internet, papers still have sections. Instead of being a separate bundle of paper, the sections are links displayed below the paper’s banner on their home page.

            Now here is something to ponder: Of the ten largest circulating U.S. papers in the U.S.[1] none of them have an environment section, a place devoted to covering advances in green technology, the impact of rising sea levels on coastal areas and islands, the listing of plants and animals as endangered or threatened, and other such stories.

            Looking elsewhere at newspapers in other English speaking countries, their papers devote sections to the environment. The Guardian and The Independent in England have sections on the environment. The Sydney Morning Herald has an environment section. Even the Irish Times devotes a section of its online paper to environmental matters.

Recent polls indicate that Europeans consider the problems of global warming to be of utmost importance, second only to the problem of poverty,[i] while Americans’ concern about global warming is waning.[ii] A majority of Americans think that the protecting the environment should take a back seat when doing so is at odds with extracting coal, oil, and natural gas.[iii]

I believe that the difference of priorities that Americans and Europeans place on the environment is, at least in part, due to the way they are covered in the news. American papers may argue that they are merely giving their readership what they want. They provide a travel section because they know that there are people who want to read about snorkeling in Belize and train travel in Canada, and it’s the same with the financial section and sports section.

This is true, but news sources also influence the way their readers perceive the news and the importance of the news. An easy example is warfare in Central America. During the eighties Americans were acutely aware of the Sandinistas and Contras in Nicaragua as their conflict raged and engulfed Oliver North and Ronald Reagan in an Iran-Contra scandal. There was also a bloody war in Guatemala at the same time, one in which the United States played a role, yet Americans were largely ignorant of the fighting in Guatemala.

Using the New York Times as an indicator of the general press coverage, the number of stories concerning Nicaragua jumped from 1,663 during the seventies to 11,477 during the eighties, while the number of stories about Guatemala went from 1,821 to 3,590 for the same time period. The number of stories about Guatemala did increase, but not to near to the extent that it did for Guatemala.[2]

Americans knew about Daniel Ortega and his baseball caps because the press told them, again and again, about the war in Nicaragua. It’s the same for the environment. Americans would know a great deal about mountaintop removal, and probably care about the plight of the land and people of Appalachia, if it received as much press as Newt Gingrich.

For an adequate democracy, a populace needs to be informed. Without the U.S. press responsibly reporting on the environment, we are left with inadequate knowledge to make the tough decisions we need to make while the planet warms, wetlands are stressed, water grows scarce, and the rest of the natural world is placed at risk.

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[1] The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, Washington Post, New York Daly News, New York Post, Chicago Sun-Times, Chicago Tribune – Source: Audit Bureau of Circulation

[2] I used Proquest to obtain these figures.

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[i] Europeans fear climate change more than financial turmoil, poll shows The Guardian 10/7/11 http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/oct/07/europeans-climate-change-poll

[ii] In U.S., Concerns About Global Warming Stable at Lower Levels Gallup 3/14/11 http://www.gallup.com/poll/146606/concerns-global-warming-stable-lower-levels.aspx

[iii] In U.S., Expanding Energy Output Still Trumps Green Concerns Gallup 3/16/11 http://www.gallup.com/poll/146651/expanding-energy-output-trumps-green-concerns.aspx