The Huffingtonpost Lets the Agenda Driven Rhetoric of an Anti-Environmentalist to Twist a Headline and a Story

It’s surprising to me that journalists will allow their thoughts—as well as their headlines and stories—to be shaped by special interests. In this case, the Huffingtonpost has a story about 100 genetically modified papaya trees being hacked down in Hawaii.

            The story identifies the act as possibly being “eco-terrorism.” As I’ve blogged before, “eco-terrorism” was a term coined by Ron Arnold, who has been an executive with the Center For the Defense of Free Enterprise for the last 30 years. He opposes environmental concerns.

            Since he first came up with the smear that puts vandals and saboteurs in the same category as the Boston Marithon bombers and Osama bin Laden, Arnold’s neologism has become part of the lexicon of the FBI, which now has a definition of domestic eco-terrorism that is loosely defined to include vandalism. This obviously pleases Arnold. In an odd sort of cyber-tautology he now cites this FBI definition on the web site of the Center For the Defense of Free Enterprise to back up his lexicographic campaign.

            I don’t really know much about the Huffingtonpost, but it should be above using this sort of agenda driven rhetoric. Some folks in the FBI would be happy to drop eco-terrorism as term that the bureau uses. No one has ever been hurt by vandals who are motivated because of an environmental agenda, and some folks have criticized law enforcement agencies, believing that using the term “domestic terrorism” will get them more funds and more attention from the press.

From Appalachian Voices: The Fourth of the Five Worst Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal

The 5 Worst Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal « Appalachian Voices

The above link takes you to the fourth of Thom Kay’s Five Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal. In this post he reveals the mendacity of the claims of reclamation, that the mined lands can be restored to their former ecological intactness or that the mines can give Appalachia needed flatlands. As Thom says:

One reason that claiming more flat land will lead to economic development is such an egregious lie is that the vast majority of this reclaimed land sees no economic development whatsoever. In 2010, Appalachian Voices worked with the Natural Resources Defense Council on a survey of reclaimed mine sites and discovered that, of the 410 mine surveyed, 366 (89.3%) had no form of verifiable post-mining development, excluding forestry and pasture.

From Coal Tattoo: West Virginia's Leaders Embrace Coal's Past As the EPA Tries to Limit Greenhouse Gasses

EPA carbon rules: West Virginia leaders continue to grasp for the past, rather than embracing the future

The above link takes you to Ken Ward’s Coal Tattoo and describes the absolute backwards stance taken by both Democrats and GOP politicians in West Virginia. Only retiring Senator Rockefeller made any sense in this ever warming world.

Scientists Discover That Mountaintop Removal Is Bad For Fish

One of the best things you can do in West Virginia is fish. I did some as a little boy, catching mostly bluegill in a lake not far from our home in Anmoore, West Virginia, and my uncle went often up to Elkins for some great fishing up around that area. Mountaintop removal, however, could be removing those fish from the rivers and streams of Appalachia.

            A new study[i] from the peer-reviewed journal Ecology of Freshwater Fish finds that mountaintop removal threatens the fish in the stream of Appalachia. Robert L. Hopkins, assistant professor of biology at the University of Rio Grande, and Jordan C. Roush of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Natural Resources Conservation Service, studied the effects that mountaintop mining had on six different fish species that live in different stream ecologies in eastern Kentucky. Unsurprisingly, the scientists found that populations of four of the species were negatively affected by the existence of mountaintop removal in their streams’ watershed. Perhaps surprisingly, the study found that the effect of mountaintop removal was less dependent on the overall acreage of land destroyed by mountaintop mining in a watershed and was affected more by how large the individual mining operations were.

            Effects of Mountaintop Mining on Fish Distributions in Central Appalachia has just been published, so I only have access to the abstract. I don’t even know what kinds of fish or which watersheds were included were in the study. I will update this post as I learn more.

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[i] Hopkins, Robert L., and Jordan C. Roush. "Effects Of Mountaintop Mining On Fish Distributions In Central Appalachia." Ecology Of Freshwater Fish 22.4 (2013): 578-586. Environment Complete. Web. 27 Sept. 2013.

Danger: It's More Than Obamacare on the Chopping Block For the GOP

The political blackmail that the GOP is using, that of threatening a government shutdown in order to render the new healthcare legislation toothless by defunding it, has been the headline grabbing news over the last couple of weeks and has only intensified over the last few days. But there is more to the shenanigans that the Grand Old Party is up to.

            The Republicans are now using the mechanism of raising the debt ceiling as a way to give away a wish list to big oil, King Coal, and other industries. According to the New York Times, GOP leaders sent to their rank and file a laundry list of provisions they want attached to the bill to raise the debt ceiling. Besides delaying Obamacare and limits on malpractice, the wish list includes such anti-environmental provisions as giving a green light to the construction of the Keystone pipeline, more offshore oil and gas drilling, more permitting of oil and gas exploration on federal lands, rolling back regulation on coal ash, and blocking the EPA’s new regulations on greenhouse gas production.

            Wow.

            Politically, the GOP controls the House, but that is only due to some ingenious Gerrymandering that some of the states were recently able to pull off. The party of Lincoln has failed to gain the popular vote for the presidency in five of the last six elections, and the one win for the GOP was for a sitting president, George W. Bush, who barely won. This isn’t the only time that the Republican Party has become a loser. Things were so bad for them in the seventies after Nixon’s disgrace and resignation that they considered changing the name of the party.

All these latest giveaways to business and industry that the GOP is trying to work into the debt ceiling deal are, of course, all about campaign donations and money. But what they are proposing is so extreme that I sense a crazed sort of nihilism that wants to pull in and destroy what is good and great about this country while this political party experiences what may be a death spiral.

From Appalachian Voices: The Third of the Five Worst Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal

The 5 Worst Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal « Appalachian Voices

The above link gives the third lie about mountaintop removal. The common wisdom around Appalachia say that no politician opposed to mountaintop mining can get elected in Kentucky or West Virginia.

            Well, a Catholic could never be elected president, the same was said a of black candidate. Common wisdom, as Thom Kay, Legislative Associate for Appalachian Voices, points out here is often wrong. Besides, folks in West Virginia and Kentucky don’t like mountaintop removal. It messes up the states they call home.

From Thom Kay's blog, a 2011 poll on mountaintop removal

From Appalachian Voices: The Second of the Five Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal « Appalachian Voices

The 5 Worst Political Lies in Support of Mountaintop Removal « Appalachian Voices

The above link is the second installment of the Five Political Lies that industry and their politicians use in support of their mountaintop removal. Appalachian Voices Legislative Associate Thom Kay points out the obvious absurdity of this lie: Mountaintop mining has increased and the jobs have gone away.

From Thom's post from Appalachian Voices. With mountaintop removal coal production has soared and jobs have plummeted.

And where there is mountaintop removal, that's where the poor people are.