Last week, Massey Energy began dynamiting Coal River Mountain in West Virginia - the site of a proposed 328-megawatt wind farm - to prepare for a massive mountaintop removal coal mining operation.
Coal River Mountain can be a wind farm that provides 85,000 households with electricity, 700 long-term green jobs, gives back $1.7 million in annual county taxes and stands as a model for clean energy across the region. Or, it can be a 6,000-acre dirty energy wasteland.
To local residents, Coal River Mountain is a last stand. It is one of the most dangerous examples of blasting for dirty coal and one of the most profound examples of hope that exists in our country. It is a crossroads.
There are two urgent reasons for you to join the cause to save this mountain: because people are in danger, and because we are blowing up, literally dynamiting, one of our nation`s most promising sources of clean energy. But really, the most important reason for you to act is because you can.
Coal River Mountain must become our line in the sand. We can no longer allow fossil fuel interests to build more pipelines, belch out more pollution, and destroy more mountains that could become clean energy wind farms. If we can stop the blasting on Coal River Mountain, we can stop talking about a clean energy future and start living in a clean energy present.
For the mountains, Scott Parkin Rainforest Action Network
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