Mountaintop Mining

"And if Appalachia is America under an X-Ray, then mountaintop removal is the centerpiece of that X-Ray. A distillation. A bald apocalyptic vision of what has gone horribly wrong in our culture, but that is in most other contexts more hidden, more subtle. In the obliteration of the Appalachians, the oldest mountain range in the world, we see, concretely, unambiguously, the exposure of profit-making without accountability. Of corporate control over democracy. Of the energy war right here on our own soil, the fallout of our careless overconsumption."
-Ann Pancake, author of Strange as the Weather Has Been, a novel about mountaintop mining in the Appalachians.

It depresses me to think this is a standing issue in North America. Pancake states that many judges are still torn or unsure as to whether it is actually illegal, yet mountaintop mining continues to endanger, if not ruin, the lives of so many people that live in the Appalachians, the oldest mountain range in the world. She has been writing about the issue for ten years and has received nothing but resistance from governments and "disobedient" civilians. Pancake states plainly that in all the struggles she faces trying to make people care about the destruction of the place she calls home, the one thing that gives her optimism is the number of people in their late teens and twenties who have passionately devoted themselves to fighting for more sustainable ways of living. Many of the environmental writers of her generation seem to face this same problem. Why is it that their peers won't take their side for once, and they are forced to find allies among the younger generations, many of whom don't have many resources besides brains, patience and determination.