chapter 1 summary

Appalachia was home to MR. Erik Reece and he always spent some of his summer in the forest hiking, writing, and sketching. One day while biking he noticed that flat lands and ponds have been filled with coal slurry. He explained that Mountain Top Removal has been a burden to the people of Appalachian for years and the top of the mountain has been blasted with ammonium nitrate and diesel fuel. The sulfur dioxide that escapes coal burning is responsible for acid rain, respiratory infection, asthma, and lung disease. At the same time forest world wide have been shrunk from 5 billion hectares at the beginning of the of the twentieth century to 2.9 billion hectares because of deforestation. Erik also said that 12 percent of the worlds birds are endangered and 24 percent of its mammals are fish. In may 2003 a draft statement was released by the programmatic environmental impact that mountain top is bad for these reasons, it buries water streams, causes erosion and flooding, degrades water quality, kills a lot of aquatic life, shakes foundation and wipes away huge portions of diverse ecosystem. Both Clinton and the Bush administration have found it difficult to stop coal mining, but environmentalist have used the Clean Water Act to protest coal mining. MR. Reece believes that carbon tax should be given back to the coal fields in forms of subsidies for jobs in reforestation. The jobs would lead to carbon sequestration and green jobs. Central Appalachia is poor because so much has been taken from it and so little has been returned. The mountain of Appalachia are responsible for the illumination and air conditioning of billions of houses, and neither the people nor the land has been properly compensated. Erik Reece witness the decimation of a single mountain, exposing how issues of corporate executives, and government negligence have affect the people. He concluded by saying that Mountain Top removal have done more harm than good to the people of Appalachia.