Eric Reece has very strong feelings about leaving the forest of Appalachia intact. He gives many different examples of why he believes what he does. Some of these examples are the Appalachia Mountains are not supposed to look like the western deserts in Arizona. Also, he talks about the wildlife and how different types of birds and mammals populations are taking a huge hit with the destruction of the mountain tops. He goes into talking about how the how the forest demonstrates an intelligence that has been honing for 290 million years. He states how he believes that the forests economy is superior to the human economy because it has a design and also says that the forest knows what it is doing. He later explained the scene when he snuck onto the worksite to see the workers bulldozing the trees down one by one. He explained how it looked and the saddening environment it was turning into.
In the reading Eric Reece was explaining the activist and counter activists and what different signs read which one caught my attention the most, “If it can’t be grown then it must be mined.” With this statement the author was trying to make a statement on how ignorant people can be. This statement means a couple of different things to me. First of all, if money cannot be grown then mining is creating jobs for people to make money and also if energy cannot be grown then it needs coal (or mining) to create the energy we need to live our complex lives. This is not necessarily the best way to look at this issue for the environmental side of things, but for the economical view it is the better way.
It would be very difficult for me to relate myself to these issues because I do not live near the Appalachian Mountains to see what is going on or what is being destroyed. I do believe if I lived near there to where I could see the destruction of the mountain; these problems would be running through my head more often. Another problem that brings me to the environmentalist side of things is the effect on the wildlife. The coal mining and mountain top removal is killing mass amounts of wildlife which I believe needs to have a law against or different ways to prevent this from happening.
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I think you did an extraordinary job with your blog post Brandon. It posed many great arguments, and am curious how you feel about its health impacts on people. I did like that you pointed out the monetary argument that he brought up. Outstanding job Brandon
ReplyDeleteThis particular posting was very easy to read and clear on what the author's stance was on strip coal-mining. I share the author's view that there needs to be more law against the mining to protect humans and animals alike. I think readings like Erik Reece's book as well as the video's watched in class will continue to strengthen the author's stance on coal mining.
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