Three Years After the Upper Big Branch Mine Disaster King Coal Still Rules

Three years ago today 29 coal miners died in an explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in southern West Virginia. Two other miners were seriously injured.

            In the three years since the disaster, King Coal still rules, and it is more of the same for the people and miners of West Virginia. Laws to reform mine safety were passed by the West Virginia legislature in 2012. The laws were considered to be weak by many safety experts, and even these weak standards have not been fully implemented. Though Barack Obama spoke at the miners’ memorial, his administration has done nothing to improve mine safety. Congress had the time for lengthy hearings over the deaths of four Americans in Benghazi, but there have been no hearings for the lives of the 29 miners.

            The Mine Safety and Health Administration has implemented more than half of the 100 recommendations it received after the disaster and are on track to take action on the remaining recommendations. That might be some good news, but the sequestration is forcing the Labor Department to disband a legal team that had been assembled to improve mine safety. Health and safety regulations for anthracosis (black lung) have also become lax. Of the 31 victims of the Upper Big Branch disaster, autopsies and medical examinations showed that 22 of them had evidence of the disease.

            In his recent book, Combating Mountaintop Removal: New Directions in the Fight Against Big Coal, American University assistant professor of anthropology Bryan T. McNeil compares the economics and politics of West Virginia to that of a banana republic. Indeed, an independent investigation and report done through Wheeling Jesuit University on the Upper Big Branch mine disaster found that Massey Energy, the company that owned and ran the Upper Big Branch mine, used its influence to run West Virginia as a fiefdom, essentially using the state an extension of the coal company.

            Although a disaster on the scale of that of the Upper Big Branch has not occurred in the last three years, miners continue to die on the job. They also get black lung. And with so little change for mine safety, another Big Branch disaster could be around the corner.

No-Fly Zone over Mayflower, Arkansas: Is the FAA Helping Exxon Mobile to Hide Its Oil Spill?

There is in place over the skies of Mayflower, Arkansas, a no-fly zone. Planes, helicopters, even zepplins are restricted from flying over the town that just experienced a large oil spill from Exxon Mobile. The flight restriction is in place “until further notice.” The no-fly zone is being administered not by the FAA, but by Exxon Mobile.

            Over at Fox News, the restrictions are depicted as being in place for safety reasons, but if past oil spills are any example, the no-fly zone is there to restrict press coverage. And this is all with FAA approval.

            It is understandable that Exxon doesn’t want the press to broadcast images of its oil spreading all over Mayflower, Arkansas. And I guess that anymore I should not be surprised that a department of the federal government would help them do it. It happens elsewhere. Statehouses are helping meatpackers and slaughterhouses to keep their operations under wraps with “Ag Gag” laws that would that make it a crime to expose animal cruelty or unsanitary conditions in slaughterhouses or other agricultural productions. In Michael Shnayerson’s book on mountaintop mining in West Virginia Coal River he writes that anyone who wanted to review a copy of a mountaintop mining permit issued by the West Virginia Department of Environmental Protection—like a license or property title, a public document—needed to file a Freedom of Information Request.

            Exxon, BP, Massey Energy, they all want to keep their secrets. Our tax dollars should not be helping them to do so.

People Believe the Darndest Things

Within our society a number of people believe very fantastic things. This recent poll found that 28 percent of American voters believe that Saddam Hussein had a hand in the terrorist attacks of September 2001. The same percentage believes that there is an elite cabal who is driven to put the world under one authoritarian government, a New World Order. Other fantastical theories get their due: Seven percent of voters believe that the moon landings were faked; Barack Obama is believed to be the Anti-Christ by 13 percent of voters, with 22 percent of Romney supporters believing this of our president; and 14 percent believe that Bigfoot walks the woods of California.

            Most popular is the Kennedy Assassination conspiracy theory, an admittedly seductive notion. Even Lyndon Johnson, as he accepted the Warren Commission Report, had his doubts that a single man had been behind the killing of his predecessor. This belief is held by 51 percent of Americans.

            Right after the Kennedy conspiracy, 37 percent of voters believe that global warming is a hoax. There is a great divide between the political parties on this, with only eleven percent of Democrats believing this and 58 percent of GOP voters holding this idea.

            Looking at this poll, I can’t help but think that once there is a crazy idea, then it takes on a life of its own. The headlines of flying saucers landing in Roswell are nearly 70 years old, yet 21 percent of voters believe that little green men landed near the New Mexico city. Paul McCartney has continued to perform in concerts, make recordings, and appear on television, but hundreds of thousands of people continue to believe that he met his maker in 1966.

            So I have good news for the oil companies and coal companies and the industries that they fund to deny global warming. You can tell all the folks at the Heartland Institute, Fox News, and all the other organizations that do their best to cast doubt on the science of global warming that they can take it easy. They can take a long vacation, spend time with their hobbies and families. They don’t have to keep selling the meme that global warming is a hoax. People will believe crazy ideas on their own. You no longer have to finance the global warming denial industry. This poll should be proof enough.

Hungry For Resources, China Takes the Gospel of Profit to Latin America

If you take an inventory of all the stuff you have in your home, just about everything except the butter in your butter dish came from China. Their factories churn out boatloads of everything: televisions, guitars, microwave ovens, etc. They even make American flags in China. And the emerging middle class in that big country of over a billion people wants to have refrigerators, cars, and other modern luxuries of their own.

All this production and consumption requires raw materials. This might be good news to the people living in Peking and Shanghai, but there are parts of the rest of the world where the new industrious and acquisitiveness of the Chinese is making some big problems.

            Already heavily exploited by the industrial West, Latin America is now the number one place for China’s foreign direct investment, putting ever more pressure on the region’s countries to increase their often heavily polluting and environmentally degrading resource extraction. A Chinese mining company is currently flattening an entire 13,000-foot mountain in Peru for copper, silver, and molybdenum. Ecuador has plans to auction off more than 11,000 square miles of pristine Amazon rainforest, an area larger than the state of Massachusetts, to Chinese oil companies. Other incidences of intensive mining or agricultural practices dot the map of Latin America.

            The juggernaut of commerce and trade, besides degrading the environment, disrupts the lives of the peoples who live in proximity to these extraction activities. To mine the Peruvian mountain, the Chinese are trying to move an entire village of 5000 individuals to a site several miles away, and the indigenous groups in the Ecuadorian Amazon say that the drilling that the Chinese oil companies plan for their region threatens their traditional way of life.

            During a time of great faith, the Spaniards forced conversions on the indigenous people that they encountered in the New World. Today, the prayers of robed priests and sanctity of crucifixes have given way to the magic of business executives and the miracle of money, whether it be dollars or yuans. As it was back in the time of the conquistadores, this movement and disruption of people’s lives amounts to a type of cultural bullying, disregarding their ways of life and forcing them into the world of productivity and profit.

            While the Chinese companies are ripping up a 13,000-foot mountain and drawing oil out of the rainforest, they will not only displace the folks who live there geographically, they will displace them mentally as well. People have no choice but to think differently when their worlds turn upside down. As with the conversion to Christianity centuries ago, people in small Peruvian villages and the Amazon rainforest will be given the gospel of profit and the saving grace of the Protestant work ethic.

            The Chinese—once so different from us, commies marching under the banner of Mao—now dress in suits and make international business investments. And soon the indigenous peoples of Latin America will think in terms of dollars and yuans. They too will want their refrigerators and cars. Whose mountains will they turn to for their copper? Which rainforest will they go to for their oil?

EPA: More Than Half of Our Rivers in Poor Shape

The EPA has found that more than half of this country’s rivers are in poor shape, with only 21 percent found to be in good condition. Most of the rivers are the victims of nutrient pollution from phosphates and nitrates that are washed into the waterways from farms, urban areas and sewers. This is in general what is called nonpoint source pollution, meaning that it doesn’t flow into the river by a pipe or culvert, but is washed in with general drainage from the adjacent land.

            Believe it or not, there has been progress in cleaning up our streams and lakes since the enactment of the Clean Water Act over 40 years ago. And at least the Cuyahoga doesn’t catch fire anymore. But to have 55 percent of our rivers—70 percent in the eastern part of our country—to be suffering badly from pollution is unacceptable. We can do better than that.

OK, The Cuyahoga no longer burns, but our waters are still impaired.

California State Parks: Clear That Chaparral, We Need to Plant Some Trees in Cuyamaca State Park!

Shaking my head and thinking, “They should know better,” is about the only reaction I can have in this situation.

            In 2003, with humidity hovering around ten percent and foehn desert winds, locally known as Santa Anas, blowing through the canyons and valley at 60 to 70 mile an hour, one of the most destructive series of fires swept through San Diego County. One of these fires, known as the Cedar Fire, burned about a quarter of a million acres. Much of the area that went up in flames was the pine forest and oak woodland in the Cuyamaca Rancho State Park.

            In the intervening years chaparral, mostly ceanothus, has taken root in the old forest stands. This is a natural occurrence after a forest fire. After a disturbance to an ecosystem, such as a fire, plants known as pioneer species will take root. Ceanothus is such a pioneer plant. These plants will reestablish the soil ecology after the disturbance. In time, other species will take root. These secondary succession species will displace the pioneer species. After many years, a forest or other “mature” plant community will once again dominate the landscape. The next big fire or disturbance will set the stage for this to happen all over again. This is a natural cycle. It goes on all the time.

California State Parks Department is trying to ignore this natural process and jumpstart the forest of Cuyamaca by burning and removing the ceanothus and other chaparral and planting pine trees. This is disrupting the natural succession and putting in jeopardy the soil ecology that pioneer species create.

            The chaparral grew from a seed bank that had been in the soil for scores of years. If the these plants are not allowed to mature and produce flowers and seeds, the next time there is a catastrophic fire in the Cuyamacas, there will not be the necessary seed bank to start the pioneer succession, and the natural cycle will be broken.

A path in a chaparral covered canyon. People don't think of this when they think about nature. photo: nobodyhikesinla.com

California State Parks Department is getting money to clear the chaparral and plant the trees. Companies get carbon credits for financing this project, as the trees are carbon sinks as they grow. Ironically, the chaparral has done a fine job of sequestering carbon. As the Parks Department burns and masticates the chaparral, that sequestration is lost.

I suspect that there is also an ecology of aesthetics and expectations in this scenario as well. When people conjure an image of “nature,” alpine forests and hillsides of oaks are often what they see in their mind’s eye. Though it is the plant community that dominates most of California, chaparral is easily dismissed as brush. The psychology of fire—a very complicated topic when it comes to chaparral that I don’t have the time or space to go into here—also plays a part in the general disregard toward chaparral.

When these folks go see nature, they expect to see what they think what nature is, and that’s oaks and pines, so the State Parks of California will give it to them all the sooner. Tourists and campers don’t have the patience that Mother Nature has.

What people think of when they think of nature photo: vrbo.com

There is much more about this, including some of the legal aspects of what is going on in this situation over at the Chaparral Institute.

Dr. James Hansen Honored as a Rebel With a Cause

In the early to mid seventies, working at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Dr. James Hansen assembled a team to perform climate modeling of the earth and found some of the first reliable and predictive computer models of global warming. In the late eighties the testimony that he gave before Congress was noted for its drama and certitude that yes, we did have a problem. The CO2 we were pumping into the air was warming our world, and if we didn’t curtail this process, heat waves and droughts lay in our future.[i]

            Hansen has not tired of warning the rest of us about global warming. In more recent years he has gone beyond speaking at seminars and writing articles in journals and has taken up work as an activist. He’s been arrested, along with Daryl Hannah, protesting the Keystone Pipeline and mountaintop removal, both of which, besides causing environmental damage to their immediate environments, add or will add greatly to global warming.

            Yesterday, Conservation Colorado announced that James Hansen will be honored as their “Rebel With a Cause” at their annual gala to be held in June. Looking back over the decades, Hansen certainly deserves the recognition. Is the Nobel Committee taking note?

James Dean caused a ruckus in the fifties still from Rebel Without a Cause Warner Bros. 1955

James Hansen is causing a ruckus now, and he doesn't even need a leather jacket and cigarette photo Goddard Institute for Space Studies

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[i] Philip Shabecoff, Special to The New,York Times. Sharp cut in burning of fossil fuels is urged to battle shift in climate. New York Times June 24, 1988