Today in class we watched an episode of 30 Days in which Morgan Spurlock returns to his home state of West Virginia to be a coal miner for 30 days. He learns the hardships of being a coal miner and living in a state where it is one of the best-paying jobs out there. I was extremely struck by some of the conditions that these men worked in; I knew it was bad, but I underestimated how old-fashioned a lot of the methods were. The thing that struck me the most, however, was the mountain-top removal process that they addressed for part of the episode. As one may guess, it is a method of mining where they literally take of the tops of mountains using explosives then collect the coal that is just below the surface. Perhaps it struck me because I wrote about mountain-top removal in my first blog post this year and how it was affecting people near St. Paul, Virginia. Some of the images were hard to look at because when I was in Virginia last summer I saw how beautiful that part of the country really is, and I saw first-hand how much mountain-top removal was destroying the natural environment there.
I know people talk a lot about "going green" and "reducing our carbon footprint" but how much can we change in a nation where 50% of our electricity comes from coal? We can use alternative energy sources such as solar and wind, but I don't know if it's possible to eliminate coal completely, especially because coal is so cheap and accessible in the US. I think more Americans need to be aware of where their power comes from and just how much they really are affecting the environment around them.
What do you think about alternate energy sources? Would it be possible to reduce the amount of mining and mountain-top removal in a country that relies so heavily on coal?
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I think that it is imperative that we as a country reduce our dependency on coal litle by little, and if possible, eliminate it entirely. I am of course, far from an expert on alternative energy, but here is what I understand. It will be difficult to reduce our dependency on coal, as it does account for 50% of our power, and as for sources like solar, wind, and hydroelectric, they are very clean alternatives, but are right now, much to expensive and logistically difficult to replace coal. On small scales, solar and wind power work very well, and I'm sure in the future they will get more and more advanced. In my opinion the fuel of the future is nuclear power, as it is very efficient, we are actually good at doing it, and it doesn't create as much waste as you might think. It only creates a small amount of radioactive waste, which can be safely disposed of.
ReplyDeleteI like the connections you created and the questions posed at the end of this post. But I would like to see you comment more on how Americans view their electricity wants as "needs", perhaps.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think could be other explanations for our dependency on coal power? A link to an article might illuminate this better.