Sunday, November 01, 2009

What's happening while you read this blog post (Part IV)

(Part I here)
(Part II here)
(Part III here)

As you read this, I’d like you to contemplate just a tiny sampling of what’s happening elsewhere.

All across the globe, humans are flicking a switch to light a room—without a clue about mountaintop removal mining and valley fills. The Sierra Club explains: “In places like Appalachia, mining companies blow the tops off mountains to reach a thin seam of coal and then, to minimize waste disposal costs, dump millions of tons of waste rock into the valleys below, causing permanent damage to the ecosystem and landscape.” As you read this, valley fills are polluting the headwaters of rivers that provide drinking water to millions.

No one is healthy as long as mountaintop mining and valley fills are a reality…

Such posts often provoke questions as to why I focus on the “bad stuff” about America, the “bad stuff” about capitalism, the “bad stuff” about industrial civilization. I’ll let Dick Gregory reply for me.

As James Baldwin sez: “People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.”

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Bonus links:

(please vote for both of these)

Top 10 vegan cookbooks

The greenest poem. Ever.

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(More cartoons here)

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Parental poetry


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Posted on 11/01 at 08:24 AM
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