LoveMountains

September 07, 2006 <?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />

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http://www.wvgazette.com/section/Editorials/200609069

Rodell no friend to mountains

Editor:

A clever headline writer nailed it with “Farewell to the mountains,” the headline of Susanna Rodell’s last column. She abandoned the mountains.

Rodell acknowledged that mountaintop removal mining is “truly appalling. It makes huge swaths of the state’s forested hills — the kind of primeval landscape now so precious and rare in America — look like the surface of the moon.” Why oh why, I thought, have you not been saying that for the last three years?

Rodell’s previous writing claimed that people who live near and suffer most from mountaintop removal use exaggerated language in describing their loss. It is almost impossible to exaggerate mountaintop removal; it is itself a gross exaggeration.

Rodell thinks that ending mountaintop removal would destroy West Virginia’s economy. She agrees with the coal barons that quarterly profits make an economy. It is this short-term greed that destroys the economy in the long run. Mountaintop removal is ending all hope of a future for West Virginia, be it economic or spiritual.

Just one example of our future economic loss is in the hardwoods industry. Every year, we lose 1 million board feet of timber that would have grown on the mountains already destroyed. This could build 4,000 houses annually forever.

Rodell saw the rape but stood by silently while the mountains screamed for her help.

Julian Martin

Charleston